tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55348491774539429352017-12-01T05:56:07.147-05:00Hudson Valley Wineries--The Winemaker Essays <b>Essays mainly about wineries, and winemaking and other topics of related interest...</b>Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-90484096062445454372017-08-19T13:02:00.003-04:002017-08-19T13:14:20.384-04:00Don't Bother, Their Here<div class="_5pbx userContent" data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}" id="js_6"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KrHF1SVevEc/WZhu0FvgSRI/AAAAAAAAA1w/Zg9aEp6E0vMZPECrC1U5ulvzhbhp6dDlgCEwYBhgL/s1600/edifice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="184" data-original-width="274" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KrHF1SVevEc/WZhu0FvgSRI/AAAAAAAAA1w/Zg9aEp6E0vMZPECrC1U5ulvzhbhp6dDlgCEwYBhgL/s1600/edifice.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>It is difficult not to begin any attempt at rational thought nowadays without the words "that idiot Trump" however, it was a well known facet of growing up in New York City that Donald Trump suffered from an Edifice Complex which the urban dictionary defines as "as serious budget-busting illness that typically manifests itself on modern college and university campuses." While Trump is obviously lacking in any marks of higher education, he did exhibit this same predilection for constructing buildings on a grand scale seemingly solely for the purpose of splashing someone's (in his case, his own), name across them, so it seems that his affinity for commemoration, (and in his case, self commemoration) should have become a focal point early on (or late) in presidency (depending on how you look at it) with regard to the issue of Confederate statues is particularly ironic. <br />The hauling down of statues has a certain resonance for people of my generation who not only recall the lassooing of Saddam Hussein but the defacement of Buddhist carvings by Islamic extremists as well as the consignment of the stentorian images of Lenin and Marx to Moscow suburban junkyards as well has the obliteration of Chinese imagery (that was not of Chairman Mao) during the cultural revolution of the late sixties and seventies. In a sense the Vietnam memorial, which I found personally very poignantly and unexpectedly moving when I went to see it, was also an expression of this tendency of de-iconfication and healthy disillusionment so in my mind at least there are both positive and negative aspects to it.<br /><br />While the tendency to purge awkward memories is a strong one in both our public and personal lives, it is worth examining where it is a healthy scourging of outmoded imagery or where the wholesale obliteration of meaning. I think it important, first of all, to distinguish purely political from artistic statements. In my view at least, the wanton destruction of the giant Buddhas of Barniyan by the Taliban was simply an act of vandalism, while the hauling down of Saddam Hussein was basically just an example of good taste. One was art and the other politics.<br /><br />Honestly, I do not believe that statues of Robert E. Lee belong in the public square. They are symbols of an abhorrent and discredited ideology and a reminder of a dark chapter in the history of the nation. To glorify that seems perverse. On the other hand, the call now to remove Lee and Stonewall Jackson's names from the barracks of West Point seems to me both unnecessary and punitive-- the manifestation of a rabid tendency to obliterate any uncomfortable symbols of past guilt from American discourse. Lee was a graduate of West Point and Superintendent there from 1852 to 1855. He is part of the history of that institution.<span data-offset-key="c5sak-0-0"><span data-text="true"> Not only that, he was undeniably a brilliant tactician and military strategist, two skills which the institution purports to teach and of which we, as a nation, if we are to remain one, are in need. </span></span>The concept of 'the state' in American has changed over time.To seek to obliterate his name simply because he chose loyalty to his state over that of his country from the institution he served and attended is in my mind more akin to an attempt at collective self absolution than a mark of sensitivity to modern cultural norms or true justice and does nothing for the stature of the nation. While it may be simply making hay in the current political climate, I think the calls to do this are misguided.<br /><br />And while I may be accused on nit-picking, I do think it is important to maintain the distinction between glorification and commemoration and in this case, of West Point, I believe it is commemoration and thus should be left to stand. And while, racists and haters may also seek to make hay on the other side of the road if the names are left to stand, I believe they will be on much shakier ground in doing so. So, while I find myself in an uncomfortable position in saying so, and I have spent a lot of time talking about commemoration and monuments of which neither subject do I have any great fondness or affinity, and while I do not share Trump's great affection for embodying memory in stone or glass, I do believe that simple eradication without accompanying self reflection of either memory or the places of honor in it. is a destructive process and should be undertaken with great care.</div>Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-63694759229712253742017-04-04T08:52:00.002-04:002017-04-04T08:52:48.328-04:00Send in the ClownsPeople criticize other people for playing games. Of course when sincerity is required, then playing games is a bad thing and those people can become annoying and tedious because they seem incapable of being serious- they do not know when or how to stop playing and certainly game-playing then can take on a rather malicious and neurotic aspect-- but playing games can also be good fun and provide a needed distraction from pain and suffering so it is not always clear really when <span class="text_exposed_show">game-playing is good or bad. Computers that are programmed to play games can often be good company when you need a distraction from pain even tho they are not human--sometimes better because you know what to expect from them. </span><br /><div class="text_exposed_show"> Wikipedia defines game theory as "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers." I was watching a movie about Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies last night and the part about the trial of the Chicago Seven (originally the Chicago Eight until Bobby Seale the Black Panther severed his trial from that of the other defendants). At the time, I remember this rather odd and antic trial and when it dominated the news. In the movie Vincent D'onofrio plays Hoffman and he gives him this pretentious self-involved quality with some fake non-localizable accent that I found annoying but anyway, Hoffman was essentially a hyper-rational game-player--they got that part right. That was also why I didn't take him seriously at the time--he was an antic clown tweaking the nose of the stuffed shirt, irrational establishment. The country was in pain at the time and needed a distraction and he provided it. So, what is the point I am trying to make here? There was this bizarre phenomenon last year when clowns started spontaneously appearing. They were rather strange clowns because it seemed they did not know how to play. They just stood there. They were clowns who forgot how to be clowns. We are a country that has forgotten how to be in pain. The stuffed shirts are still running the country,--maybe we have all forgotten how to play--maybe it is time to send in the clowns. The real ones.</div>Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-13360329675821130332017-03-31T08:37:00.000-04:002017-03-31T08:37:06.045-04:00Freedom and Bar-B-Cue<div data-contents="true"><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="bst0f-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bst0f-0-0"><span data-offset-key="bst0f-0-0"><span data-text="true">I am reposting this post from March 20 because I think it is important and worth saying. It had to do with a computer contract I was doing in Birmingham Alabama under what were very painful physical circumstances for me at the time. I had a pinched nerve in my neck that lasted for six months (and longer). I was in a lot of pain and could not stand up straight but I went to work every day for those six months. I had a family to support and some things are worth doing, just like some things are worth saying...or resaying.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="3pgom-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3pgom-0-0"><span data-offset-key="3pgom-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="3tje3-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3tje3-0-0"><span data-offset-key="3tje3-0-0"><span data-text="true">A few years back I was doing a computer contract for Bell South in Birmingham Alabama. It was in a corporate park. It had snowed, which was unusual for Birmingham, and by 3:00pm nobody was left in the building except me and a couple of supervisors and the security guard. I looked out the window at the parking lot and there were two cars there; mine and the one I assumed belonged to the security guard. I went up to one woman who was still there at her desk and I asked if they were closing the building.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="afp7d-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="afp7d-0-0"><span data-offset-key="afp7d-0-0"><span data-text="true">"Why are you still here?" she asked me.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="3inac-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3inac-0-0"><span data-offset-key="3inac-0-0"><span data-text="true">"I'm a contractor. If I'm not here I don't get paid. They own my ass."</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="dikba-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dikba-0-0"><span data-offset-key="dikba-0-0"><span data-text="true">This was the mid-nineteen nineties you understand, supposedly the era of the "New South."</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="505k4-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="505k4-0-0"><span data-offset-key="505k4-0-0"><span data-text="true">Anyway, she looked up at me and with a smile that would have melted butter on a cold day, said,</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="2brv1-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2brv1-0-0"><span data-offset-key="2brv1-0-0"><span data-text="true">"It's nice to be owned. Isn't it?"</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="2nmmv-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2nmmv-0-0"><span data-offset-key="2nmmv-0-0"><span data-text="true">I knew exactly what she meant, right away.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="at1iq-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="at1iq-0-0"><span data-offset-key="at1iq-0-0"><span data-text="true">Now, if ever in my life I wanted to call a woman a "c__t" it was at that moment. Instead, not wanting to get fired, I am ashamed to say, I just gritted my teeth and walked away.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="3pgup-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3pgup-0-0"><span data-offset-key="3pgup-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="bpdvf-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bpdvf-0-0"><span data-offset-key="bpdvf-0-0"><span data-text="true">In any case, I have always regretted that I let that racist bitch get the last word. Unfortunately no matter how much of a bitch she was, what she had said about human nature was true. People do most often like to be owned or at least are accepting of it--particularly in the workplace. It relieves them of the burden of thinking-- so long as they follow the rules they know they are OK. In Trumpian America we should be particularly mindful of this attitude as in its worst incarnation, it can become fascism. I am not trying to make a political point, I am just stating something I have observed about human nature.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="4a4r3-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4a4r3-0-0"><span data-offset-key="4a4r3-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="3mu6f-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3mu6f-0-0"><span data-offset-key="3mu6f-0-0"><span data-text="true">So, what I learned from all this is that, no matter what my mother told me, sometimes, you can't observe the niceties and the office etiquette. Sometimes you can't just be polite-- you just have to dispense with that when other people think they own you or your reality and then, even if it is snowing in Birmingham Alabama, you just have to call a spade a spade, and a "c__t" a "c__t". So while, I can't say I am proud of everything in my life--I am at least trying to make some amends at this late date.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="b23fr-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="b23fr-0-0"><span data-offset-key="b23fr-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ds06o" data-offset-key="77pkv-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="77pkv-0-0"><span data-offset-key="77pkv-0-0"><span data-text="true">So that is the end of the previous post and this is what I have to say about it--it is clear why the woman in this story was a piece of shit. What is not as clear is why she was right about people being willing to subjugate themselves and that was really the point of this story--that it is human nature (and a lie that we tell ourselves) that we feel we only have to right to fully define ourselves only after we have been subjugated. In marriage, we willingly mutually subjugate ourselves out of love and hence define the family as what is more important to us than our individuality--what this woman in the story was talking about was NOT a willing subjugation, it was a brutal imposition of the will of one race on another. (And the same holds true for the brutal imposition of one individual's will over an other.) The simple fact of human nature about self definition that the woman got right was that once we are subjugated to something we can begin to define ourselves anew. In the case of what she was talking about it produced the miracle of black culture in this society--in bondage black people were made free to define themselves completely. The key point and the key difference is understanding what is a willing subjugation what is one that is imposed. We all feel the need to have power to define ourselves, but if we are willing or even eager to sacrifice the one thing that his truly important --in the case of this story--freedom--then that self-definition is worthless and we have lost the one thing that is truly important. Obviously this has political implications for our present situation and we should be wary that in submitting to an enslaving ideaology (whether it be of the right or the left) or to a religion, or to a person, we should remember that it is never worth sacrificing your freedom as that is really the only thing worth having and without it--and no matter what they tell you, without it there is no such thing as love. </span></span></div></div></div>Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-52172095523885528572016-03-17T07:20:00.000-04:002016-03-17T07:23:50.829-04:00The Brigantes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WebQIK9VDdE/VuqS0B11OnI/AAAAAAAAAv4/ZoNjPL7PzYIPOHPpSB_WSAtJAY5uPeJxg/s1600/kirk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WebQIK9VDdE/VuqS0B11OnI/AAAAAAAAAv4/ZoNjPL7PzYIPOHPpSB_WSAtJAY5uPeJxg/s1600/kirk.jpg" /></a></div>To depart briefly from the themes of fun, (brilliant or otherwise) let us for a moment focus on something perhaps no less manic but certainly more violent and barbaric. It should be noted that in ancient times, this same area of Blackpool was inhabited by Celtic tribes known as Brigantes. They were fierce, sea-going warriors, known for building vitrified forts close by the seashore. Vitrification is a process whereby (usually red) sandstone is emplaced over the more accessible points of a castle and coated with a compound that when heated causes it to harden and bond with its neighboring stones to produce a remarkably slippery surface,--difficult to scale or mount a serious assault. <br /><br />Descendants of these tribes are justifiably proud of this technology which often saved them from the predations of marauding Vikings (whose shoes were likely already a bit slippery from standing in fish-guts and puke). “...to vitrify a fort, ancient man left little or nothing to chance. Having assessed the melting characteristics of the rock (with a test burn) and acquired additional more suitable facing rock if needed, the rampart was prepared by the application of surface stones, together with the application (paraphrasing) of a flux-like compound known to improve the adhesion and melting characteristics of the rock... the entire rampart was turned into an enormous kiln, by using clay to build a vented tunnel around and above it,... This allowed the heat to be amplified and directed toward the rampart, thus achieving the desired vitrification. ” This substance that was used to slag the stone corresponded and was descended in part from an ancient unfunny compound known as “Greek Fire” which (having little or nothing to do with the digestion of diner food) had the unique characteristic that it continued burning even when immersed in water. It was sometimes introduced by the fort-vitrifiers to achieve the very high temperatures required for melting the sandstone and also allow the introduction of water into the vitrifying process as an agent to control melting on the surfaces.&nbsp; <br /><br />It had been employed by the ancient Greek in naval battles, being formed into balls to be hurled by catapults at enemy ships, this having, aside from its hydroanaphilic qualities, a capacity to scare the living shit out of anyone. Because of this secondary capability, it continued to be particularly effective as a naval weapon long after the fall of Greece as a naval power; (as a sailor you really do not want to watch other sailors burning to death, whether they be friend or foe). Though its exact composition remains a mystery, its horrific effects are well-recorded by several respected sources and documented, (as have been those of its modern, equally unfunny, counterpart, napalm). <br /><br />The point being, despite suffering the aforementioned effects of the omnipresent voluntary historical amnesia, to the Blackpuddlians we can safely ascribe that the arrival of a dozen or so somewhat confused Norwegian sailors did not in reality mark the beginning of Blackpool’s nautical heritage. In describing these early residents of the area, the modern word ‘brigand’ is usually substituted as a later derivation of the ancient Roman term "Brigantes,” which was the name the gave to the loose agglomeration of Celtic tribes who would sometimes harass the Roman forces in coastal areas of an otherwise then subject Britain. <br /><br /><br />The derivative word, "brigand," therefore eventually came to imply not only general lawlessness but also a certain shiftiness of character and the willingness, even eagerness, to utilize duplicity for pecuniary aims or civil advantages,--all while maintaining an appropriately nautical flair. The Brigantes, like their forts, were thus renowned for being somewhat slippery m___f__kers and were singularly adept at the hit-and-run raids inflicted on their less fort dependent colleagues,--for this purpose employing small coastwise crafts that later became known as Brigantines. The word “Brigantine” thus was eventually adopted into the common usage by the Royal Navy in the early 17th century as referring to coast-hugging, smaller vessels that in a pinch could change their markings and engage in privateering or even piracy should the opportunity present itself.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />To trace the term yet further, (and hopefully we are not straying too far afield from our original topic of amusement parks), “A brigantine (the shortened expression is the modern term brig)” meant a small vessel equipped both for both sailing and rowing, ‘swifter and more easily maneuvered than larger ships and hence employable for purposes of piracy, espionage, reconnoitering, etc. and as such however (and this is a key point) attendant upon the presence of larger friendly ships nearby (paraphrased) for protection’. The meaning was later broadened to designate any small two-masted vessel with square rigging, having on the mainmast, a fore-and-aft mains’il. (A triangular type of sail has an advantage over square-rigged sail in being able to be better maneuvered and to allow for better sailing of the ship (sic) in general in shallower coastal waters where winds and currents are often uncertain.) “It did not take much to convert a square rigged brigantine from a merchant ship to a privateer, or vice versa and privateers have a long history in Atlantic waters and though they extended their activities away from the coastline they were still generally inclined to avoid pitched naval battles, relying instead on subterfuge and deception. Since the better prize was (a) merchant ship loaded with goods that could be easily sold or a vessel wounded in another engagement, limping home it was not usually until after one of these situations occurred that they would raise their true colors.” While the range of these vessels was extended through greed and opportunity, the original imputation of slipperiness still obtains and has remained integral to the definition even though the use has since been institutionalized.<br /><br />Nautical entrepreneurship (as I euphemistically dubbed it) is a long and well-regarded tradition on the seas. American privateers, (just one example), were on the whole so successful at it that it was often difficult to keep a crew aboard the somewhat pathetic American Navy during the Revolutionary War as they generally preferred the more hazardous but definitely more rewarding work aboard the privateers. Washington himself was constantly obliged to attend to this matter, using the Quartermaster Department to dig up seamen until responsibility was transferred to the Marine Committee of the Congress but even then, nothing, not even the ten-dollar enlistment bonus, was sufficient to lure those with actual nautical skills who could easily garner a tidier sum throughout by remaining in private employ. <br /><br />The point here being (sigh) that the true origins and heritage of Blackpool are not entirely lost in the mists of time and further, that in all likelihood the murderous Brigantes themselves eventually became (or almost all) good Christians, (practicing Catholics or Church of England) except for the Theosophists and Wiccans and as further evidence of this fact, there once was (and is still) existing sculpture ensconced high in the vaulted nave of the church of St. Michael the Archangel, at Kirklington, (not far from Blackpool) in North Yorkshire, a three-headed icon, the central one belonging certainly to Ogmios, one of the major ear-licking Druidic deities worshiped by the Brigantes. <br /><br /><br />There are precious few other extant in situ neo-Celtic period images to compare him with but we know Ogmios in particular generally represented the central figure in a sea-going mythology. He appeared generally (as occurs here at Kirklington) in a triptych, his extenuated tongue implanted luridly in the ear of one of the adjacent, (obviously lesser) deities and it is clear therefore that despite its standing today in a Christian church, this pagan god was the main subject of this particular sculpture that appears to us gazing down from the nave of St. Michaels.&nbsp; <br /><br />Not just the Brigantes but all of the early Celtic tribes; the Setantii, the Carvetii, were living around present day Blackpool, (whether or not they were busy vitrifying ramparts or hunting Elk or ear-licking like manic Chihuahuas at the time), and were worshiping a rather eclectic panoply of gods, mostly Druidic in origin, but some others derived or modeled after their Greco-Roman counterparts (these no doubt introduced by Romans who did not prevent but frowned on native forms of worship). It was consequently not all that unusual for some of these Celtic deities, over time, to take on the characteristics of their Roman counterparts (and vice versa) and aside from obsessive ear licking (or perhaps because of it) Ogmios was associated with eloquence and also strength and hence collated with the Greco/Roman god Hercules (who also was known to have exhibited the characteristic on occasion of being able to talk his way out of a scrape). (And should he not) Sometimes Ogmios was pictured with his tongue becoming a club, the club also being the preferred weapon of Hercules (the convincer). &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /><br />It is also possible that in the image in the church where he is depicted with what appears as his tongue inserted into lesser deity’s ear, it is not a tongue at all but rather the links of a golden chain by which their ears were linked to the tip of his tongue; implying the power of his speech chained mens’ minds with golden links (as he is also credited with having invented the runes or written form of the Druidic language and thus also became the god of marriage contracts which is probably why he was granted ear-licking status in the first place).<br /><br />As for his association with amusement parks: it is also possible that having his tongue employed regularly in coaxing earwax out of lesser deity’s ears, that (aside from having a fluid vocabulary) he was also the god of throwing up, which perhaps explains his association with that other hyperdentitious deity whom we have called ‘Funny Face’ (after George Tilyou who first named him); and who presided over the entrance of that delirious cathedral of fun, Steeplechase, though how and why this name came to be employed is somewhat less clear (and perhaps should remain so).&nbsp; Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-25681169764185381792015-09-23T09:21:00.000-04:002015-09-23T12:48:33.528-04:00Bonanza!I visited the Mark Twain 'Museum' in Virginia City (which is in Nevada, not Virginia) a few months back. It is housed in the former offices of the Territorial Enterprise and the major drawing card is Mark Twain's original desk that miraculously survived the fire of 1875 that destroyed the offices of the Territorial Enterprise, where Twain worked as a reporter, and much of the town in the waning months of the decade long mania surrounding the discovery of the Comstock lode. Supposedly, when he was not meandering around the countryside, he had worked in the basement, so I was told by the kindly, red-haired lady that charged me the five-dolla<span class="text_exposed_show">r admission fee and so, his desk was miraculously spared the depredations of the general blaze that took the three floors above. That the desk had been found and recovered from the charred rubble of the building. This immediately sounded a little suspicious to me and but then again, certainly in harmony with Twain's own talent for manufacturing serendipitous and miraculous circumstances in pursuit of readership and liquidity. So, whether or not the desk was in fact his original desk or one that the proprietors of the Emporioum on the floor above that was hawking candy and other tourist kitsch had picked up at a yard sale, I happily took my tourist pictures and bought my postcards, content in the knowledge that it was, if not his actual desk, a close facsimile and I had the same warm feeling about the portable toilet, regarding which a similar claim was made courtesy of a placard saying 'Mark Twain's ass was here' (though we are not similarly heir to its contents) and I assume they were not talking about his donkey.</span><br /><div class="text_exposed_show"><br />Later in this same trip, on the way to visit a friend, I stopped a diner in Nevada City (which is in California, not Nevada). The diner was owned and operated by a French woman Genevieve and her husband Tom and as I read the history of the establishment printed on the back of the menu, I learned that her husband was a former aerospace engineer who had retired here to what has become something of a mecca for the heirs to 'the beat poets', and haunt of such epic poets as Gary Snyder and apparently Tom Cruise to open this aromatic establishment known as the Classic Cafe. Well it so happened that her husband (whom I had not recognized immediately from the picture on the menu which was of a much younger man) was sitting right next to me. (I had mistaken him for a general issue retiree killing time at the local diner). I explained to him that I was on the way to visit a friend in Grass Valley and that I had come out west to research a novel I had already written called 'monoville'. I thought he would be pleased that someone had taken such a lively, if overdue, literary interest in what essentially is an overlooked and ignored parched segment of the the Western Sierras,-- well let's not go into that. Anyway, he in particular seemed vaguely unhappy at this news.<br />"You guys come out here trying to make a buck off of our history and our stories." he admonished me scowling.<br /><br />Well, since a buck was about all I had made to date of 'his history" I just nodded, and added "Hopefully".<br />This is the conundrum of California life, the vast and iconic scope of the landscape, the people and the history and the peculiar proprietariness of those people when they feel they have been cut out of the profits. I would very much like to write my next book set in that diner. As Spock would say 'Fascinating'<br />.<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Cus9m7W9Jc/VgKmzUNhkGI/AAAAAAAAAvE/gaqBC5FBS2I/s1600/Classic%2Bmenu.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Cus9m7W9Jc/VgKmzUNhkGI/AAAAAAAAAvE/gaqBC5FBS2I/s1600/Classic%2Bmenu.png" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pr8kSH42Eis/VgKluR2KdhI/AAAAAAAAAuk/yWvDTCcwXeQ/s1600/classic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pr8kSH42Eis/VgKluR2KdhI/AAAAAAAAAuk/yWvDTCcwXeQ/s1600/classic.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qZwcuNgWNOk/VgKmFe8LMSI/AAAAAAAAAu0/B6JJQanKFXg/s1600/DSCF1274.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="244" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qZwcuNgWNOk/VgKmFe8LMSI/AAAAAAAAAu0/B6JJQanKFXg/s320/DSCF1274.JPG" width="320" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7yP8DXYPEpU/VgKl6p2fCYI/AAAAAAAAAus/MeyAj3J0Yng/s1600/DSCF1273.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7yP8DXYPEpU/VgKl6p2fCYI/AAAAAAAAAus/MeyAj3J0Yng/s320/DSCF1273.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m5LCfKaQ6DU/VgKmt6jOOGI/AAAAAAAAAu8/rtebnU1l2Cg/s1600/Twain%2Bdesk%2B2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m5LCfKaQ6DU/VgKmt6jOOGI/AAAAAAAAAu8/rtebnU1l2Cg/s320/Twain%2Bdesk%2B2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div></div>Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-4141982473376589372015-06-28T13:18:00.000-04:002016-12-26T12:38:16.321-05:00A Grazing Mace<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nHRFydkjiZg/VZAtoDJt6qI/AAAAAAAAAt8/pJ69Acqd9OA/s1600/amazing%2Bgrace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nHRFydkjiZg/VZAtoDJt6qI/AAAAAAAAAt8/pJ69Acqd9OA/s1600/amazing%2Bgrace.jpg" /></a></div>I am going to talk about race and racism now,-- for two reasons: firstly I think it finally may be possible to have an honest and serious discussion about race in America, and secondly it is raining, and I, a 'for all intents and purposes' white person in a 'for all intents and purposes' predominantly white society, (and not to diminish the importance and horror of recent events), find, that having nothing else to do, this is the only time I voluntarily give serious consideration to the subject of race (which is why I also think black people should give us back February...as that is the month it is least likely to rain.).<br /><br />Joking aside,--why has it been so extraordinarily difficult til now to have a serious and rational conversation on the topic of race. Words can be a bludgeon or they can be a scalpel. I would think therefore it has a lot to do with the fact that in this context, they have long been used mostly as bludgeons,-- all or most the words conscripted became immediately intensely and highly charged, and what is more, facilely capable of conveying different meanings to different people even in the same context in a way that is more conducive to conveying emotion than meaning. Take the word 'racist' itself...to most 'normal' people, on the surface it is unambiguously bad and to some extent has become a synonym for 'bad character', at least until they find by some definitions they themselves may be included under it. Stephen Colbert's dealt with this possible 'double edgedness' of the word by declaring. 'I do not see race!'&nbsp; This is the big lie method of dealing with the problem,-- of course we all see (and hear) race, but as in all effective 'big lies' there is a convoluted kernel of truth. The big lie is a method of dealing with the convolutedness of real explanation by distraction. To look at that inconvenient kernel,-- what defines, (for me at least) someone as a racist, is someone who sees race<u> first</u>.&nbsp; It is for them the only defining and therefore, least subject to revision assumption they can make about a person. All other assumptions become either subordinate or non-existent to it. We hate the idea first and the person second. This is of course the most pernicious form of racism leading to stereotyping all all the other 'de-individualizing' and 'brutalizing' mindsets that characterized for example, Nazi Germany.&nbsp; One group or set of people arrogates to themselves totally the idea of the 'individual'.<br /><br />I say this is the definition of 'racism' because if we strip this idea of 'primacy of perception' from the meaning of the word then we strip the word of meaning and it is therefore 'by definition', its definition. However, we have a niggling feeling that this does not do full and ample justice to the 'double edged' nature of the term. For example,--employing this definition, one would have to admit, (since we are being honest here) that Affirmative Action was a racist policy,--Why? Simply because it was a social policy that considered race first and foremost. Well, that may be true and we may have to admit that Affirmative Action is racist, and this is a rather uncomfortable and inconvenient fact for those of us who promoted it or support it,-- but it also is a case of using fire to fight fire! It was a policy that was instituted and adopted to correct a grave and longstanding historical injustice and therefore, while it may be 'racist' in the definitional sense,--it was also just and beneficial. So, in this case, the complex and inconvenient truth is that 'racism' per-sae was used for a good end. That still does not make racism itself good--not by a long shot. (No wonder this subject has been so difficult to discuss!) but while racism itself may be evil, not all racist policies may necessarily be bad.&nbsp; That is just the riddle we need to live with. All of which brings us to an even more uncomfortably complex idea,--that of 'institutional racism'.<br /><br />While it is clear that peoples attitudes (for the most part--except for a hopefully diminishing number of crazies) have changed their mindsets in their daily interactions (no more Jim Crow), it is equally true that the racism that was embedded in our political, economic and legal institutions both in the South and the North is alive and well.&nbsp; While this fact rolls off the tongue facilely and easily, what does this really mean and is something increasingly heard on talk shows in post-Obama America?&nbsp; In practice it means that institutions used and still do provide justification and context and give encouragement and play to the dregs of racism that, while no longer approved by society in general, still lurk in the depths of our psyches.&nbsp; In closed 'sub-societies', like law enforcement,--a different standard may de-facto prevail than in society at large and this double standard is then, more often than not for convenience sake overlooked. Unshakeable bonds of mutual benefit secure its continuance within the context of the legal system. It is self-perpetuating... Prosecutors depend on police, courts depend on prosecutors prisons depend on courts etc. a hand in glove relationship that facilitates swift justice but also (in the case of black individuals) often facilitates swift injustice--what is important is that there is nothing in it which requires a fundamental change of attitude from the other--it is a web of marriages of necessity,-- a complex web of inter-dependencies that no party is willing to tip in part, for fear of tipping the whole--in short, American justice functions on a sort of American version of the old European Aristocratic ideal of expediency in personal relations.<br /><br />So, however, in the context of this discussion, even faced with the reality, we must consider this idea: is institutional racism a real thing?&nbsp; Certainly its effects and outcomes are real and evident to anyone who care to look. (Most of us do not until something like Ferguson shows up,--or it starts raining). However if we can ascribe racism to an institution than why cannot we ascribe thought and opinion, and if institutions have thoughts and opinions than rationally speaking perhaps private institutions like corporations cannot be granted a lesser status and so we have been led down the slippery slope that led to the absurdity of a Citizens United.<br /><br />So, to deny that institutional racism exists is an absurdity that flies in face of evident facts and to admit it exists within a legal context (which it itself defines) leads to yet another absurdity which is that of institutions having values and opinions that themselves need to be protected under the law. By admitting to the existence of institutional racism somehow this is a means for institutions to themselves achieve 'personhood so,--by definition,--their very existence depends upon its continued existence. This is not mere sophistry rather it is a false equality of the kind that any society generally uses to convince the most useful of citizens that they are valued when in fact though their contributions are valued, they themselves are not--in other words--in its most 'honest' form,--slavery. (And not to get all weepy about the founders'--something which they, in their wisdom foresaw as the most pernicious form of governmental arrogance)&nbsp; So,--I am already mentally exhausted,--and we have not even scratched the surface or attempted to address the use of the 'n' word,-- or examined the fact that we finally have a commander-in-chief (again not to make light of recent events) who can almost carry a tune. But having pointed out the fact that words must first be 'unhijacked' if they are to serve any useful function in future conversations, I consider at least part of my part of the task done for now and so will leave it at that.&nbsp; <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-22183052440883853002015-02-28T09:11:00.002-05:002015-03-25T09:51:13.450-04:00No ExitI manage a page on facebook called 'facebook still sucks dot com' (which really nobody posts to except me); (and really, what has facebook done for me lately). It points out (somewhat gratuitously how I am feeling assailed and regularly nauseated by the misdirected endless stream of cardboard cutout political sentiment, the self-congratulatory vacation and dinner photos, the baseless snarkiness of the pseudo-intellectuals that inhabit the ad festooned pages of this virtual <span data-dobid="hdw">tête-à-tête</span>,-- need I go on, (the cat photos),-- now, if you will, let me explain why I love facebook, and this particular realization came to me in one of the two places where all realizations come to me (either in the diner or in the shower),<br /><br /><br />--I was sitting eating this ham and egg sandwich (not in the shower) (quite a good ham and egg sandwich, in a booth facing the door, (actually in a state of semi-rapture because, I had just found out I could actually move the seat back a few inches further from the table--I may be a few pounds overweight) when a young man, relatively good-looking of about thirty five, with a scraggly/curly kind of beard and moustache of the kind you find in colder weather climes where shaving is a form of excessive self-congratulation,--anyway, he was flinging his arms and legs about randomly in different directions, as he entered the diner, in a manner that would have been alarming were it not immediately evident that he suffered from some kind of palsy that made these motions involuntary--anyway, I must tell you a little about myself at this point,--for some reason, whenever I see a person like this, someone afflicted in this manner, I invariably experience this intense upwelling of affection,--it is totally irrational and involuntary, I know,--the person in front of me could in fact be a serial-killer-rapist-grandmother-abuser-horse-sodomist but to me at least, they immediately take on the aspect of sainthood, and it is as if I am overpowered by what theologians have noted as the distinctive odor of sainthood, conveying as it were instantly that this person was the source of this upwelling of feeling and in other words really can do no wrong,<br /><br />--now this is, as I mentioned, I am aware, totally irrational but, as I said, I really have no control over it,--so as the young man walks in and up the aisle toward me and the pasty, glum, semi-toothless, 280 bowler waitress standing at the counter greets him warmly, "Hello Wally".<br /><br />Full stop--<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A3VpL0IpYig/VPHMcnRRC5I/AAAAAAAAAL0/Fy3Pnf9DvuA/s1600/noexit2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A3VpL0IpYig/VPHMcnRRC5I/AAAAAAAAAL0/Fy3Pnf9DvuA/s1600/noexit2.jpg" /></a></div>That was when the realization hit me,--the reason I had experience this immediate emotional response had nothing to do with the qualities of this individual but was because some part of me had interpreted the wild limb waving as a kind of greeting, as if he were frantically trying to capture my attention (and perhaps only my attention),--,the situation in my warped consciousness had been transformed and it was not that he suffered a debilitating illness but rather that he was at that moment in fact, so overjoyed to see me that he had lost total control of his limbs--this is the simplest explanation but of course totally irrational, yet, I will not apologize becuase this is just the way I interpret these things,<br />Half stop <br />-- I have always been this way for as long as I can remember,--for years I remember walking down the street hoping to hear my name yelled out by some random stranger, hoping he or she was a long lost friend or brother or sister or lover, that is just the shape of my emotional architecture, I long for this abrupt and public connection with another person that will bathe me and them in the joy of mutual recognition,--and here it seems it was at last, in (of course) the unlikeliest of places,&nbsp; when this young man walked into the diner so,<br /><br />To get back to my original point, this is why I love facebook, it is it seems constantly waving its limbs uncontrollably in this palsied frenzy to grab my attention and mine alone,--the content or character behind the facade is irrelevant,--I just crave the mutual instant recognition it affords. This may be as shallow and irrational as posting cat pictures or last night's dinner, but I swear it is the truth. So, at the point where I find myself walking down the street or into a diner having lost control of my limbs, I only hope you, dear reader, are the one sitting there, waiting to receive this entirely<br />involuntary impersonal and somewhat abstract embrace.Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-78739287202067441732014-10-22T20:38:00.000-04:002014-10-22T20:38:09.144-04:00The <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dz9py-q5I6M/VEhNt_VEWDI/AAAAAAAAALU/Fcvafo7zHQg/s1600/parachute.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dz9py-q5I6M/VEhNt_VEWDI/AAAAAAAAALU/Fcvafo7zHQg/s1600/parachute.jpg" /></a></div>JEWS:<br /> It has recently come to my attention that Jews are not as popular as they once were and that we (I say we for reasons of simplicity which will become apparent) are getting sensitive (some would say oversensitive) about this. How do you know this? one might reasonably ask.<br /> Well, really its been little things,--not getting invited to the best parties, getting snickered at if we wander into the hardware section at Walmart, WWII. Things like that. In fact, apart from atten<span class="text_exposed_show">ding Fiddler on the Roof, most people prefer not to hear from or about Jews anymore at all.</span><br /><div class="text_exposed_show"> How did this sad state of affairs come to pass you may ask? Well, apparently we got one bad write-up a couple of thousand years back and its been an emotional roller coaster ride ever since. (Critics!). Anyway, Not being a joiner, I decided it was high time for me to do something about this personally. To take some individual action.&nbsp; You know,--take it to the streets! So, (being Jewish), I hired a publicity agency. A few weeks later they came back shaking their heads, saying, <br /> 'The real problem is that nobody can agree who is Jewish and who is not!' <br /> 'That is true.' I said. Not even the Jews can agree.' So I said,<br /> 'Well, I'm paying you guys, what can we do about this?' <br /> 'You need a motto', he bald guy with glasses says popping a piece of gum into his mouth. <br /> 'Something you all can subscribe to without reservation'<br /> 'Jews don't go anywhere without reservations' I say. When this does not get a laugh I continue...<br /> 'OK' I say. 'I agree, can't hurt. ' So three weeks later they come back smiling. <br /> 'We got it!' they say, (all beaming like they just floated the Costa Concordia).<br /> 'Something that all you fucking Jews can subscribe to and which paints you in a relatively positive light'. <br /> 'OK,' I say 'Show it to me, guys, I can't wait!' <br /> So the other guy (not the bald gum chewer) sets up this easel (I'm thinking, who are you?! John Nagy). He takes what I guess is a piece of his mother's curtains, anyway a very fancy cloth that is draped over the piece of cardboard that he puts on the easel and then, very dramatically,<br /> whips off that piece of cloth and there it was, --in Bodoni font--(Bold!).<br /> . 'Jews,-- we don't jump off anything unless we have to!' 'That's pretty good.' I say, concealing my pleasure. <br /> 'That is Mon-nee!' I am thinking. So, if you happen to see this on a billboard, you should know that it is because one person took action, one person really can accomplish something. Wait,---</div>Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-50469813413311564592014-09-20T21:50:00.000-04:002014-09-20T21:50:22.648-04:00Reenacting revising the revisionistas.I just got back from Johnstown where they were reenacting the battle of Johnstown in the Revwar. If there is one thing you can say about reenactors you can not accuse them of being revisionistas. If there is one thing they value, it is authenticity. Which made the ride home on the NYS Thruway all the more delicious as it was dominated by a theme of revisionism which I will relate in three increasingly brief anecdotes...<br /><br />(Part 1)<br />Kindergarten Revisionistas:<br />The Commonwealth Club program came on NPR radio and there was a feminist with a cartoonish voice addressing them&nbsp; (ironically this occurred near Coxsackie) repeating the latest feminist trope which I have heard ad nauseum on NPR and Jon Stewart and various other venues, this being that the reason there are more men than women in executive positions in business goes back to kindergarten where overly aggressive, self-centered boys were told they had 'leadership skills' whereas overly aggressive, self-centered little girls were told they were being 'pushy', (which is a code word for being a 'bitch').&nbsp; I don't know if this is true, (I don't remember either case occurring in kindergarten and unlike the speaker, I wouldn't want to malign my kindegarten teacher gratuitously) but I can tell you this,-- in my working life I have have plenty of experience with both,--and I have always had a term for overly-aggressive self-centered men, and it wasn't&nbsp; 'leaders', I generally called them 'pricks'.&nbsp; As for the women, I have had no problem with them in the workplace except for the fact that all those bitches were trying to screw the guys with 'leadership skillz' instead of me.<br /><br />(Part 2)<br />Quantum Superposition Revisionistas:<br />&nbsp;All the rest areas on the Thruway now have been renamed&nbsp; 'Texting Stops'.&nbsp; This causes me to question the intelligence of all those people who, during the first fifty years of the Thruway's existence, pulled over into these areas under the mistaken assumption that they were resting. In fact they were just behaving like morons when they pulled over and did nothing.&nbsp; This so called 'resting' was nothing more than just waiting for someone to invent Smart phones. They were obviously lulled into thinking they were resting and so they could sit there stupidly and placidly while laboring under this mistaken assumption. This is probably similar to what will eventually occur with bathrooms which are now called 'rest rooms'. Nobody is really resting in them. They are just waiting around for someone to invent something better to do in them.&nbsp; And everyone will probably feel really stupid when they find out what that thing is, that they have been waiting for. <br /><br />(Part 3)<br />Revising the anti-revisionistas<br />After the Commonwealth Club gaveled to a close, someone happened to mention on the radio that the Irish have a saying, that 'you can't eat the scenery'. This should probably be revised to 'you can't eat the scenery, Unless you are a vegetarian'.<br /><br />That is the end of my revisionist ride on the Thruway. I will tell the story of the battle of Johnstown at some later point.<br /><br />Anyway, I sure I have managed to offend just about everyone with this post and all I can say is if you wait around for a little bit, there will be a revised version of it. In the meantime, I am resting.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Tx-PGivvXEM/VB4u0He54PI/AAAAAAAAALA/240RgxOLVUk/s1600/revision.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Tx-PGivvXEM/VB4u0He54PI/AAAAAAAAALA/240RgxOLVUk/s1600/revision.jpg" /></a></div><br />Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-33062329355287578582014-09-14T19:57:00.000-04:002015-06-28T14:47:59.427-04:00“Star Spangled Banner”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VCajuvhc7YY/VBYtKhacX6I/AAAAAAAAAKw/2T2STHpGjew/s1600/Ft.M.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VCajuvhc7YY/VBYtKhacX6I/AAAAAAAAAKw/2T2STHpGjew/s1600/Ft.M.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span class="userContent" data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}">Francis Scott Key stumbled&nbsp; upon the idea of inflicting the Star Spangled Banner on what was at that point, a less than musically attentive nation from aboard a ship in the harbor where he observed the British attack on Fort McHenry. This battle, occurring on Tuesday, September 13th, 1814 during the War of 1812 led to him being inspired, as he observed the American Flag, tattered but still flying proudly over the fort the following morning leading him to pen the&nbsp; poem that was only later set to music (so maybe it wasn't his idea after all). <br /><br />The melody he himself however eventually chose for it was from an old English song called “To Anacreon in Heaven”. Anacreon was a Greek poet noted for his paeans to wine and love. It is not known if he actually is in heaven or even if, being a Greek, he believed in heaven, however, the English believed him to be there and that is (presumably) good enough for me as they usually have the best information about regions to which the French have only limited access. <br /><br />Only fragments of Anacreon’s original poetry remain. One of them goes like this:<br /><br />THE VINTAGE<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Men and maids at time of year<br />The ripe clusters jointly bear<br />To the press, but in when thrown,<br />They by men are trod alone,<br />Who in Bacchus’ praises join,<br />&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Squeeze the grape, let out the wine:<br />&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Oh with what delight they spy<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The new must when tunned work high!<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Which if old men freely take,<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Their grey heads and heels they shake;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And a young man, if he find<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Some fair maid to sleep resigned&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the shade, he straight goes to her,<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Wakes and roundly ‘gins to woo her; etc.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />In case you hadn’t noticed, there is, it seems, a great deal of technical information regarding Greek winemaking (as well as the quasi-erotic insomnial stimulation) that can be gleaned from this seemingly bland pastoral ditty,--. From inspection of the first verso, it is immediately evident that it was not the custom apparently, to allow women to be involved directly in pressing of the grapes: “They by men are trod alone.”&nbsp; While it is tempting to associate this with or attribute it to the fact that women may have been menstruating at the time and thus considered unclean and unfit for this kind of duty, historically speaking, that is in fact a mostly Jewish Talmudic idea and hence not one that likely permeated Greek wine culture and so, is most likely the wrong gloss on the stanza as far as the gender related subtext.<br /><br />If one instead takes testimony found elsewhere, scenes portrayed on pottery and in literature and the like, the act of treading wine is carried out not only by men but by ithyphallic fauns or satyrs. So yet another motive arises.&nbsp; The satyr or faun is a figure that the Greeks used to portray a kind of non-discriminating asexual libido. If you have ever trodden on grapes, you know that it is a very sensual experience, squishing the must beneath your toes and feeling the juice squirting out from between them. It is therefore very likely that at Greek wine crushing festivals, a great deal more than grapes were being squeezed: “When tunned work high”, (or so the poet would have you believe). Greek wine is well known to have additives. Usually they claim it is tree resin.&nbsp; (Yeah, tree resin,-- that’s the ticket!)<br /><br />It is not known if Francis Scott Key was under the influence, or sexually erect when he wrote the Star Spangled Banner but he was ‘tunned worked high’ and the chances are, having just recently been released into American custody from a British frigate, he may have been both. (No doubt a degree of libatious celebration would account for the rather obscure sourcing of the melody.) The song immediately became popular, though it was not until 1931 that it was officially adopted as the national anthem. The coining of the phrase itself, “Star Spangled Banner”, still remains something of a mystery to me which I will make a&nbsp; cursory and half-hearted-attempt to unravel (no pun) despite the fact that whoever made it our national anthem was probably themselves ‘worked high’ at the time.<br />In parsing the words, “Star Spangled Banner”, the evolution of the “star” metaphor could easily have been derived from the very shape of Fort McHenry of which certainly Key was aware. The configuration of the fortifications was that of a star enclosed within a star and so the flag also at the time, was a field of stars within a star, within a star, a powerful and poetic image from which Key may have drawn his inspiration. As far as introducing the word “spangled”, I would hypothesize that perhaps Mr. Key (not altogether a bad name for a musician by the way) had made the short trip to the strip joints located just up Light Street prior to his capture by the British (I stand by this assertion though the Star Spangled Banner is very infrequently employed by strippers to accompany their routines).&nbsp; <br /><br />These obscure conditions under which certain phrases such as “Star Spangled Banner” thus may have evolved or been coined and thence adopted into the national consciousness, the reasons for which, (I as a would-be ‘historical author’ would prefer not to speculate on), nevertheless unreasonably tend to fascinate me.&nbsp; Phrases that have been adopted generally in other common usages, even those ‘coined’ specifically for coins per sae can, in themselves, be, as it were, sometimes sanguinely amusing. For instance, it is not widely known that the motto;&nbsp; “IN GOD WE TRUST” did not appear on U.S. currency and coins until April 22nd, 1864.&nbsp; The earlier motto had been simply: “MIND YOUR BUSINESS”. (Neither of these two phrases are eminently singable, but when taken together might have served as a good synopsis of Thomas Merton’s philosophy.)&nbsp; </span>Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-90597092116304452422014-08-17T11:32:00.001-04:002014-08-28T17:09:33.434-04:00A Few Thoughts on why the Republican Party is so Attractive to Ex-hippies like Arlo Guthrie and myself,--<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m-mHycNksUQ/U_DK7JQRnMI/AAAAAAAAAKM/h_BSaeXr5Zo/s1600/bushhippie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m-mHycNksUQ/U_DK7JQRnMI/AAAAAAAAAKM/h_BSaeXr5Zo/s1600/bushhippie.jpg" /></a></div><br />(Disclaimer: this is an unfunny post so if you are here strictly for entertainment you can skip it)<br /><br />Republicans have always valued strategy over tactics and this seems to be a strategy that is working mostly because of a convergence of circumstances that includes the present constituency of the Supreme Court. The recent Supreme Court decisions seem calculated at this point in time, to support this subtle shift in power. Republicans also have a good track record when it comes to (decades later) adopting the policies and methods of those they once opposed. The native distrust of unchecked power which was a drivin<span class="text_exposed_show">g force of the 1960s protest movements like the Yippees (minus the wild hairstyles and the counter culture image) have thus been adopted by Republicans as a workable model in the present day and thus have given rise to populist movements like the Tea Party that are difficult to control. The Hippy movement of the 60s was based on an unquestioning underlying assumption of shared values as being the source of collective strength. Rulings like Citizen's United and Hobby Lobby are calculated to divert power and shift it to entities that can counterbalance an overbearing federal government based on what Republicans perceive as shared values. So let us not be naive about this because, certainly though they may have become heir to and adopted the socially attractive naivete and 'fight the power' ethos of the hippies, Republicans are far from naive.</span><br /><br /><div class="text_exposed_show">Therfore I think those that accuse the Republican Party of being simple-minded obstructionists are missing the point and underestimating the quality of their thinking. The situation needs to be analyzed in the context of a larger national agenda. Because of the electoral system instituted by the founding fathers, so called 'blue states' have long wielded an outsize influence in elections at the national level. The policy of Republicans is therefore to take advantage of present circumstances at a time when the nation is not subject to any perceived existential thereat to intentionally shift power and responsibility back to the states. They thus have settled now on a strategy of paralyzing the national government and thereby counteracting and contracting the outsize influence that, thanks to the electoral college system, is presently wielded by the 'blue' states.<br /><br />This approach is in accord with their underlying political philosophy and it has long been the Republican ideal, (despite it being the party of Lincoln) of supporting states rights and relying more heavily on the power of the states rather than that of the federal government to resolve problems, while conversely the Democratic ideal has long been to rely on a strong national government to address overarching and endemic issues. Continued distrust in Washington therefore only works to the Republican advantage and they look with sanguine glee on congress' plummeting approval ratings and the lack of collegiality in Washington because it is part of an overall strategy that while personally embarrassing to those members of congress (and the president), seems to be working.</div>Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-40798519981873846572014-08-08T18:22:00.001-04:002014-08-09T11:56:14.986-04:00Bound For Glory<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ORF98XEAI1A/U-VpN4sChiI/AAAAAAAAAJk/h5baOL4UaU0/s1600/PhilShapiro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ORF98XEAI1A/U-VpN4sChiI/AAAAAAAAAJk/h5baOL4UaU0/s1600/PhilShapiro.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />“Phil Shapiro came to Cornell as a graduate student in economics and started his show like many other folk-music DJs of the ‘60s, playing records from radio station WVBR’s cramped studios, then in the basement of Willard Straight Hall. He soon began to bring in performers for interviews and a few live songs, and then went on to concerts with a live audience.” (from Cornell Chronicle, September 5th, 1996).&nbsp; The site of the attempted assault by the Delta Upsilon boys during the takeover of Willard Straight Hall by black activists in April 1969, the heavy oak and glass door on the south side of the building was also the door leading to the college radio station, WVBR, ironically therefore one through which I too would attempt to gain to a wider world and a wider notoriety though in a slightly different field of endeavor and with a guitar instead of locksnippers. <br /><br />Phil Shapiro had graduated Brandeiss and come to Cornell to pursue his education and become a&nbsp; disc jockey for the college station which ran his show “Bound For Glory” on Tuesday nights As the name suggested, was mostly focused on playing what, as Peter Schickele has pointed out, is often erroneously called, folk music. Occasionally he would have local musicians or groups perform live on his show and I fervently and rather constantly desired to be one of those lucky few. <br /><br />Phil, in 1969 you have to understand, though he was about our age, looked more like a middle-aged Jewish man returning from the beach with a fraying plastic folding chair gripped under his arm. He was a prematurely balding, skinny with a bushy reddish moustache and a stubbornly inneffective comb-over that had an aymptotic relationship with his head. He wore only long sleeve rumpled white shirts over a (also like a Jewish grandfather) strapped (not with a gun but shoulder straps) ‘T’ shirt;&nbsp; black horn-rim glasses that were always askew.&nbsp; He was what we in Brooklyn generally and with vague sympathy would have called, a ‘schmo’. It was, however, his very unBrooklyny ‘folksiness’, that managed to save him from the ignominy to which we, his fellow Jews, would no doubt have otherwise heartlessly consigned him, and the fact was,&nbsp; he was genuinely and sincerely interested in promoting the local music scene in Ithaca and local musicians even if their work didn’t conform strictly with his particular concept of innoffensive 'folkiness' which eventually gave us a chance to appear on his show.–Actually twice.&nbsp; <br /><br />The first time Phil had arranged for our rather raunchy acoustic trio which went under the name of “Raw Meat” ((composed of Hugh Cregg (later Huey Lewis), Chip (Gabe) Aiello and myself)) to perform live on a broadcast of his show from the coffeehouse at Anabel Taylor Hall. The following year I appeared again, this time with my own electric band called the “Greased Grapevine”, and this time direct from the cramped studio in the basement of the Straight.&nbsp; Because we were the first (and last) electric band to appear on Phil’s show, it was an event which in my own mind I had inflated in importance to that of Dylan going electric at Newport, combined, for several extraneous reasons related to extra-musical substances and beverages we brought with us, with a bad supermarket accident (‘Cleanup in aisle blues’).&nbsp; <br /><br />We debuted on that second occasion an original song called “Peanut Butter in my Love” which at the time may have sounded shocking, but in the context of today’s sex-cum-fast-food-fetishists, underwear on the outside, Tom Jones clones appearing on just about every TV commercial for food may seem rather tame by comparison; the food and alcohol based havoc we wreaked on the studio was not.&nbsp; It appears somewhat odd in retrospect that my entire early musical career was framed by some kind of food theme.&nbsp; We had, for some odd reason, brought along jars of peanut butter and Boone’s Farm apple wine into the studio with us that evening, neither of which, as we learned shortly, are especially compatible with complex mechanical equipment. <br /><br />I learned all this in 1995 while visiting for he 20th college reunion; that he had been honored by the Town of Ithaca for his work; “Last Sunday the show (Bound for Glory) began its 30th year, reaffirming its title as the longest-running live folk music radio show in America” and I ran into him on the street not long after that. By this time he no longer looked so much like a ‘schmo’ as a kind of, fringed-vest wearing prototypical semi-anonymous folk hero which is what Ithaca had over the years made him. <br /><br />He was also by then also no longer skinny but, like me, definitively paunchy (to put it mildly) and wearing the fringed-leather vest and cowboy hat, bushy beard draped over, yep,- probably the same torn T-shirt probably purchased from Macys on Flatbush Avenue. By now, having comfortably grown into not only the larger size pants but his role as local legend, he had no real obligation to acknowledge me, (his one ‘walk on the wild side’) with anything but forgetful bemusement which is just what he did. The fact is, we had left his studio a terrible mess the second time we performed strewn with the Boone’s Farm wine, Ritz crackers, roaches and peanut butter all over the floor and the microphones and forgetfulness indeed seemed the logical choice.&nbsp; He was however an infallibly good host and did not mention it,-- ever.&nbsp; I therefore believe he deserves that award he got, not least for spending so much time in a place that smelled that bad but also for cleaning up the mess we had inadvertently left (and doubtless countless others after), probably having to use that stinky, metallic, acrid solution, whatever it, was and for being just ‘Phil’–no longer a schmo,–and that time I ran into him on the commons finally he had his glasses&nbsp; on straight. Those of us who had got this far out ahead, those of us who weren’t dead,–well all of us found we were for lack of a better term, Bound for Glory.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />Thanks in part to Woody Guthrie, from whom the title of the show (and this piece) was derived, politics and music in the sixties would remain indelibly wedded and thanks in part to the actions of a politico I call Little Red Fred which I will go into later, Phil Shapiro would to remain in every sense of the words, the ‘Master of his Domain’, not in the “Seinfeldian” sense but in that his domain that south corner of the “Straight” would remain forever inviolate,--and he and Woody Guthrie would be left to lord over it with an iron but very sympathetic and no doubt well-lubricated fist..Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-92156957714012473562014-07-23T11:48:00.000-04:002014-12-09T20:32:44.523-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-brtUPZ-LgtE/U8_f7vqphtI/AAAAAAAAAJU/ckb9ybk2aUg/s1600/Ricky+Jay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-brtUPZ-LgtE/U8_f7vqphtI/AAAAAAAAAJU/ckb9ybk2aUg/s1600/Ricky+Jay.jpg" /></a></div><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Brothers Karamazov </span></b><br />Kazmazarov, Karma-jackoff,–or, (carjacking. Catjerking) or, what the f**k– brother!<br /><br />Speaking of magic (was I actually speaking of it, or did you just think I was?), the magician, Ricky Jay, (or Fast Eddy as he was known to some of us, the willing/unwilling captives of Eddy Street), was not just a magician but what one could call a ‘rock star magician’. This was a relatively newly coined vocation and meant essentially someone who sported long hair and would open the show for some of the better known local rock bands which Ricky did with his impressive card-throwing act, which was, I must say again at the risk of repeating myself (and though I have not seen it), by all accounts, quite impressive. It would eventually land him an appearance on the Carson Show which would in turn lead to an impressive showbiz career under the guiding and equally facile hand of the impresario David Mamet. <br /><br />In any case, since I’ve already shot my metaphorical wad: At that time, in the early 1970s, Ricky would sometimes wander into the Gnomon Copy Shop on Eddy Street where I worked the night shift appearing mysteriously at the counter usually as I was just wrapping up at about 9 AM. He usually took the form of his alter ego, Fast Eddy of Eddy Street (not Fish’s Eddy), for this impromptu appearance in order to chat up my not-very-attractive female boss, Tina, who had bad teeth and black copy ink perennially smeared all over her pale freckled/pimpled face which in some way set off her black hair in the manner of a black terrier humping a tan Chihuahua and this seemed to contribute something undefined to her pimply allure, at least to some of the hipster elements who frequented the copy shop. Her main managerial duty seemed to be chain smoking Newports.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />Ricky was somewhat short, also with greasy, long black hair and acne, resembling nothing so much as an albino mole that had been unceremoniously rousted from its burrow or a turtle that had been poked and withdrawn its head part way back into its not very colorful shell. He always carried a deck of playing cards with him and while I never had the pleasure of seeing him perform on stage, I do recall his constant, seemingly involuntary and somewhat obliquely threatening one-handed obsessive manipulation of the deck, even while he was engaged in a rather trivial conversation (usually with Tina) in his high-pitched, inoffensive bantering, slack-jawed tenor. His propensity to dress in all black contributed further to his mystique but also gave seemed to underline that he was in fact of no definable species (either metaphorical or literal),–(a veritable black box of self-defined Linnaean disarticulation). <br /><br />Somehow you always felt like a ‘carnie’ mark in his presence and occasionally he would oblige your drooling naivete with a trick. Aside from his uncanny resemblance to the object of his affections here, Tina, I also had a sneaking suspicion that he had another identity entirely, his doppelganger as it were; an equally physically amorphous ovoid Russian avant-garde author who likewise would drop in the copy shop at odd hours who had written (so I learned) a short story about a man who fell in love with his own ass. I had never seen the two of them together and though this is admittedly somewhat slim evidence on which to base this assertion, both, at least from the unenviable vantage offered by my station at the heavy duty copy machine, peripherally, exuded this identical comforting/threatening,--ineluctably foreign yet somehow familiar suggestion of a mind furiously at work while furiously at play.<br /><br />So that morning, as I sensed a familiar peripheral ovoid figure at the counter, I knew immediately it was one of these two (or some dyadic manifestation of one or the other of one of them) though, being exhausted from a long night of copying textbooks, I did not know or really care which. Somewhat embarrassed by my own state of ink-smeared ignomony (ignomoninny?) (a state I occupied then more frequently than I do now), I did not even glance up. Working the graveyard shift meant that I did not need to consort with any of the customers, ovoid or otherwise though there were some rare exceptions like Ricky and the Russian ass-portraitist that I found interesting and would favor with my sparkling conversation. But mostly I would spend the major portion of my long and tedious evenings there trying to figure out what exactly the word Gnomon in the copy shop’s name indicated,--whether it was derived from the Greek word ‘Gnosis’, which seemed to make some sense for a business dedicated to copying college term papers, or the ‘gnomes’ who inhabited its ink smeared bowels like parasites, feeding the insatiable maw of the industrial Xerox copier through the long upstate winter nights–like me. So there I was one evening, by myself as usual and something unusual happened. While humping away at the midnight oil (a good and reliable lubricant), copying insightful analyses of Gunther Schuller, Gore Vidal and Teddy Roosevelt (or Humper, Shoelaces and Thumper as I dubbed them, mostly to amuse myself) for the ‘phantom of the opera’ student body, I suddenly realized I held in my hand a shiny, blood-red-brown cardboard covered pamphlet additional scores of which stood stacked in a sloppy, gangrenous pile inside a box next to the copy machine. They looked disturbingly like the notebooks I had used in Hebrew School copy over and over the Jewish Kanji that was the heritage of those of my then unsuspect paternity. What they were were actually official CIA Vietnamese pacification manuals. As I recall, three of those four exact words appeared on the cover in black felt tip marker. This was 1969 and the war was in full fling so you can understand my wonderment as to how I came to be in possession of these. <br /><br />Opening the one I grasped somewhat hesitantly in my trembling hand to peruse it, I saw the word ‘Secret’ stamped in menacing black letters right on the inside of the front cover which caution was reinforced by heavy black lines running throughout the text, like tire tracks of a manic NASCAR driver obscuring that which the censors deemed unfit for more diverse consumption. The print quality was horrible, they looked like hand-typed, self-published books to my naive eye (of which in my inglorious college career I had seen a few and since produced a few) rather than any kind of official government document. They were taped along the spine with what looked like electricians’ tape. They could have been run off in somebody’s basement on an ‘EZ Bake’ version of my copy machine. How and why they had found their way that evening to Gnomon Copy on Eddy Street was a mystery that supplanted the Gnome/Gnosis mental pacifier conundrum on which&nbsp; I had been sucking. I could only conjecture they were for the use of one or more of the Cornell sociology professors who were then actively consulting with the CIA (just as some of the campus radicals had been alleging all along–) although I tried to keep an open mind. as I read on, about whether in fact this was the case. Without the benefit of my usual mental fodder now I was put into, as they say in Indiana, ‘something of a tin lizzy’, there under the fluorescent lights of ‘our lady of the perpetual Xerox’, wiping the back of my toner-stained hands across my face as I had seen Tina do, this time in itchy genuflection of the Department of Defense. Seeing myself reflected in the large mirror on the far wall, I felt somehow militarized and dashing. I suddenly fashioned myself a soldier of fortune of the copy machine militia, all decked out in ink-smeared jungle fatigue camouflage,--but in what army really I wondered.<br />Not to trivialize matters, this was of course to anyone even remotely connected with the anti-war movement as I was, a find of potentially tremendous ramifications, directly implicating the University in the unpopular war effort. Just as I had with the unexpected hypnosis session, and Hugh’s unsolicited confidences, I felt vaguely guilty and burdened at having become the unwilling repository of an unasked for knowledge,-- yet in this case also strangely excited. I stopped copying and spent a large part of the rest of my shift reading through the pile of notebooks. They contained. what I saw in my sleep-deprived state as, some fairly specific and useful information, (useful if you were in Vietnam,–or really any hostile environment),-- how to trade candy bars for enemy force locations, novel interrogation techniques involving spandex and Gatorade, how to arrange and pay for Water Buffalo transportation and also summary outcomes of certain previous covert operations in Quang Tri and Dong Ha Provinces, and incidentally, in a very well-written informative and fascinating appendix on how to check for razor blades secreted in a Vietnamese hookers’ vagina. Reading this was as close as I ever personally gotten to either real magic or to Vietnam (or more recently to vaginas for that matter). <br />&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />The following morning, as I watched as Ricky Jay sidle up to the counter with the obligatory comforting/threatening deck of cards in one hand, tired now from my long night of copying conflicting impulses and still not knowing what&nbsp; to do with the surfeit of guilty knowledge I possessed, I felt a burning need (it was not the ink this time) to discuss with someone, anyone and Ricky just happened to be there. I approached the red Formica counter. The manuals sat silently and deceptively innocuously back in their cardboard boxes near the rear doors of the copy shop, along with all the copies I had made, ready to be picked up. <br /><br />“Hey” I said guiltily. He did not make eye contact but I knew a mental link had been established. The knowledge of those manuals was weighing on me like the doughy dregs of the previous night’s pizza. Perhaps I harbored some dim hope that the famous Ricky Jay, like some human antacid, might be able to quell my simmering discomfort, to just to make them disappear altogether and thereby alleviate me of the burden of making any decision about what to with them. Just as I was about to broach the subject, I realized that he, through his hyperkinetic magician senses, had already anticipated and assessed the entire situation and dealt the problem in the manner magicians often do and with some surreptitious own self-ass-loving prescience and had simply made them disappear. ‘Gone’ (as the Buddhists say,–gone beyond, Parasamgate). Copies and originals all had disappeared without a trace. <br /><br />It was later that same year I found out Ricky had gotten on Johnny Carson throwing his playing cards (perhaps using a deck fashioned from the stiff brown cardboard covers of VietMinh CIA pacification manuals,--who knows). So my somewhat abortive acquaintance with Ricky Jay was also my first brush with the wider world of fame, (aside from Markie Bell who later became the drummer for the Ramones), much later and earlier,–(and of course there was Hugh but he would take the long road to fame via the Ken Kesey on-thebus-off-the-bus yogurt truck).<br /><br />As you may have guessed, aside from these randm encounters at the copy shop, I didn’t really know Ricky Jay very well personally (different ovoidian circles). Yet, after the Carson appearance I never got over this vaguely surreal thrill of impersonally-personally knowing him, ‘the real’ Ricky Jay, the man behind the mask, the magician who was now famous for some patently ridiculous talent, in his case throwing cards, (I was still a paramountly hip author who never wrote anything down but just copied what everyone else had.) It was like I was still sitting on the folding chairs in the offstage area at Ben Light Gym, listening to Huey perform. A few years later I learned he had authored his own paramountly 'hip' book entitled ‘Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women’ (I never learned into which category Tina fit) and has since appeared in several movies and TV shoes including HBO’s Deadwood,–usually as a disturbingly ovoid villain who gets shot at some point in some indefinable portion of his anatomy. In spite of my own aversion to his aggressively ageometric anatomy, pockmarked complexion stringy black hair and preference for Newport chain-smoking copystore managers, following the disappearance of the pacification manuals, I became what can only be described as, ‘a fan’. He and I were both&nbsp; keepers of this same delicious secret,--his far more important but lesser known talent for making CIA pacification manuals disappear into thin air.<br /><br />So it is now some thirty years later and Hugh calls me up. I still have achieved nothing of any note. We chat amiably. A few days previous I had stopped by the theater where he was doing a star turn as the crooked lawyer, Billy Flynn. in ‘Chicago’. Finding him not there I left my business card with the taciturn, heavyset black stagehand and went on my way. So it was a total surprise when that same evening I get a call. ‘He says its Hugh’ my daughter says, handing me the phone. Hearing him instantly brought to mind something that was related to those two strange buildings and us, their temporary inhabitants. <br />‘Your voice sounds a little different.’ I say. <br />‘Your voice sounds exactly the same.’ He says.<br /><br />I do not know and have not been able to find out what happened to Lionel Quebecsteen/Stein, my college roommate, (I think he is a hedgefund manager, or if he ever got over his depression over his ex-girlfriend Mary back in Wisconsin. He is probably lounging around somewhere, gangly legs folded under the bed (at least I hope so). Nor do I know where Paul Belden, the mountain-man Ag Student is or if he achieved any fame in the competitive arena of nose picking, or whether Baker’s black hipsters, Larry and Joe, ever escaped from their momma’s boy brand of swaggering black militarism to become true bad-asssmuthafuckers. Anyway, I am sure quite they are all doing quite well, far better than me certainly, (at least one would hope),–and here I am failing at yet another passionate avocation,--grape growing and in my military alter ego, the pacification of the native population of Chester, New York.Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-39507620697160718792014-07-18T16:36:00.002-04:002014-07-18T17:42:54.853-04:00On the Passing of Tommy Ramone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y5I_SETQPu4/U8mH27Z6vcI/AAAAAAAAAJE/5KkqM4HBLi4/s1600/Tommy+Ramone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y5I_SETQPu4/U8mH27Z6vcI/AAAAAAAAAJE/5KkqM4HBLi4/s1600/Tommy+Ramone.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span class="userContent">I didn't meet Tommy Ramone until a wine tasting/music lecture/book promotion event held at the Art Gallery in Woodstock sometime in the summer of 2009. It had been organized by Tony Fletcher﻿ (author of 'Boy About Town' and 'The Smiths). Fred Smith, bassist from the New York Dolls was there along with a few other notable musicians on the panel. I was there as one of two wineries (the other being Fred Smith's, Cerighino-Smith Winery) supplying the wine for the after party. At the time I had been most excited to see Eric Weisberg who was an old time 12 string guitarist and was supposed to be on the panel. I remembered him from the sixties Village scene but to my disappointment Eric was a no-show at the lecture.<br /><br />After the lecture and party I went out on the street and was introduced to Tommy Ramone. Tommy was one the original founders of the punk rock group the Ramones and he had been replaced by Marky Ramone as the band's drummer by 1978 following extended 'creative differences' (I believe he stayed on as manager of the band). Marky Ramone (Mark Bell) was my best friend, Marc Sperber﻿'s, neighbor at 640 Ditmas Avenue in Brooklyn back in the sixties and we used to sometimes hang out at the Bells apartment when not playing punch ball in the courtyard next to the building. Mark, Fred Bell﻿ (Fred) and Marc lived on the first floor of 640 Ditmas while I lived two blocks away (one long one short) on Ocean Parkway. This being the early to mid-sixties,-- pre-punk, you should know, so it was hard to understand what the Bell brothers were trying to do musically because there was as yet no corresponding musical scene.-- The context for it simply had not been invented yet.<br /><br />Usually they would practice separately in their respective bedrooms but sometimes Freddy and Marky would play together in Freddy's room which was even less conducive to harmony with the upstairs neighbors, I am sure. To me, a kid who was into Mississippi John Hurt, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Dylan and Phil Ochs, they seemed crazed,-- like men possessed. It was loud. Really loud. We could sometimes hear it from up the street on Ditmas Avenue or even as far as around the corner on East 7th and if we ventured into Mark and Freddy's apartment, we would inevitably find their mother Audrey sitting in the kitchen smoking Pall Malls draped in her pastel print housecoat, face expressionless, as if she were suffering a stroke and a high-powered-testosterone-inflamed-auditory-carpet bombing issuing from somewhere nearby (there father seemed perenially absent,--possibly by design). If I was bold enough to stick my head inside the door to say 'hello' they presented a rather strange tableau, with their stringy long black hair and longer faces, and not only because they were identical twins(one of two sets in the neighborhood) but because the music seemed to have transformed them from awkward teenagers into crazed zombies from some futuristic Daliesque dystopia. There were the two skinny Bell brothers, fellow musicians, buck- toothed twins, Freddie sitting on the bed, one leg draped to the floor, eyes closed, seemingly gang raping his electric guitar while Mark hunched over epileptically assaulting the blue sparkly drumset as if trying to launch it into space.<br /><br />The only way we could tell them apart was when they were playing music. Possibly the same was true for their mother, which is possibly why she had bought them different instruments, which stratagem she possibly by then regretted. This turned out to be more about Tommy's replacement in the Ramones, Mark Bell. rather than Tommy Erdelyi himself but it has the advantage of being a first-hand account, so it is my hope the reader will overlook this. </span>Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-61534628696861118292014-05-12T10:08:00.003-04:002014-05-12T11:24:42.846-04:00Why I Am a Writer<b>Why I Am a Writer</b><br /><br /><br />I had just spent a pleasant couple of hours catching up with an old college friend and the daughter of another friend at Bryant Park in Manhattan and after dropping them both off at the S Train in Grand Central was walking back along 42nd street when I spotted this young light-skinned black man with a cane who seemed somewhat disoriented. When I got a little closer I saw he had on a button, the kind you used to get in High School for joining the G.O. It was large and round and what it said was, 'I am Deaf and Blind. Can you assist me'. Not that I regard myself as more of&nbsp; a humanitarian than the next guy but I had about an hour or so to kill before I had to meet my daughter on the upper West Side to take her out for her birthday so I took his arm and stupidly began asking if I could help him get somewhere. Of course he couldn't hear me, but he extended his palm and indicated that I should write what I was trying to say on his palm. "Can I help" I wrote out in large capital letters with my finger. He immediately took out a sheaf of white 6 x 9" paper and a pen a wrote down. I want to go to the library. I was overjoyed that I could communicate with him and I wrote "Sure" on his palm and grabbed his arm and proceeded to the main library which was only a block and a half away. Once we got inside I had a sinking feeling that I did not know what to do with him. I had just assumed that there would be some kind of special provision for vision impaired people and that I could then unload him on some kind individual and be on my way. All there was however in the main anteroom were two ladies, one with red hair and one with orange hair and the one with orange hair was holding an ipod. "Where do you want to go" I signed on my new friend's hand. He took out the white sheaf of paper and wrote "I want to see John Rathe in information services". "OK" I signed. This is where it got complicated. Well not really, it had occurred previously on the street but I had been able to overcome the difficulty that I am about to describe by attention and perspicacity. The white sheaf of paper he was writing on had been written on just about every sheet back and front, so whatever he was writing now he was writing over something he had written before making it next to impossible to make out what he was trying to say. "He wants to<br />see John Rathe in information services I informed the ginger haired lady with the ipad. She looked confused. "I don't know. There are a lot of libraries in the city. Are you sure you in the right library?" "This is the main library I signed to my new friend. He didn't get it at first so he erased his palm with his other hand and I wrote it again. "This is the main library. Are we in the right place?" He gave me a big smile and thumbs up. "We are in the right place" I said to the pair of helpfully unhelpful volunteers at the desk. The lady with the ginger hair showed me the ipad. She had looked up information services for the library and there was no John Rathe. I scrolled down to Katherine Wu and then back up to the top. Nope. No John Rathe and it looked to me like the bulk of information services people were down at 110 Madison Avenue which the little old lady speculated was the Morgan Library. This led to another somewhat frustrating round of superimposed squiggles and paint by number questions. "We are in the right place" I finally insisted, not sure at all that this was the case. "Well you better go up to the third floor and talk to the librarian". The elevator is right past the gift shop to the left". On the way to the elevator I stop and take his right hand and write "My name is Ken". He shakes my hand with a big smile and takes out the pad and writes "My name is alvkninmr." in any case I decided it was after subtracting the extraneous letters, Alvin. So Alvin and I go up to the third floor. Now I am not a small person and now, having to guide my friend Alvin I was essentially a double person, so people were having a hard time getting in and out of the elevator. Finally we get to the third floor and I head to the main reading room where there is a duplicate the ginger and fred couple sitting at a desk except this is a young man and an older woman. After a conversation much like what had taken place on the first floor they finally directed me inside to the main reading room desk. I went up to the nice middle aged man behind the desk and said. "We are looking for John Rathe". He did a double take as if I was was speaking Norwegian. Finally he says "Ohhh! You mean John Rath-thay. He's at the reference desk thru that door to the left." So we go thru the door and to the left, directed by a security guard and go up to the desk. John Rath-thay is not not there but will be here in five minutes. Sure enough, three minutes later a middle-aged man which a reddish beard going to gray shows up and sites behind the desk. "We are looking for John Rath-thay". "You found him." he said not evincing any expression but just stating a fact that obviously, I having come to the library had looked for and successfully found. Well honestly, at that moment I felt like I was a magician. That I had conjured John Rath-thay from thin air. That I was the one who had made him appear at just this place and at just this point in time. "He was looking for you." I say, "Do you know him?" "Yes, but he was here a long, long time ago." "Can you help him. He is going to need some paper" I said. "The paper he has is all written on." "Oh, he's going to need a lot of paper, John Rathe says and commences to produce it. Now clearly, despite John Rathe's statement, to Alvin he was someone of immense familiarity. Someone that he might likely have interacted with just yesterday, but John Rathe is telling me that he hasn't seen Alvin for a very long time. I was at something at a loss as to what to say. Clearly I was confronted with two very different realities, Alvin's which had taken place just yesterday and John Rathe's where the interaction that had caused Alvin to seek him out specificially had taken place 'a long long time ago'. I realized that this was precisely the situation I always found myself in. That people and things that I had met or encountered a long long time ago in real time were to me, as present as if the interaction had been just yesterday. This is just the way my mind works. I produce them at will and interact with them just as I had John Rathe, magically. I then realized that this was because I too was somehow blind and deaf and that is why I experienced the world this way. For other people the world had gone on spinning, things had happened, marriages, divorces, trips, children, walks in the park these had all transpired in some reality that had passed me by and so I could just still magically produce them just as they once were just by scribbling some letters on a palm or a piece of paper or a computer. That because some part of me also was blind and deaf, these images remained as fresh as if they had just occurred,--yesterday. "Nice to meet you!" I wrote on Alvin's palm and turning to John Rathe I said "I really have to go. I have to meet my daughter." "I understand" he said. "Will you take care of him?" I asked. "I will take care of him". I walked out of the library on to 42nd street smiling and shaking my head. "John Rath-thay"Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-59204931941344899932010-01-22T09:19:00.008-05:002010-01-27T12:20:29.931-05:00Jock and JillRemember High School? I bet you think you do,--the problem is that for most of us as we grow older, those memories have become vague, slathered over by years of TV sitcoms and movies, a plaster of idiocy telling us how High School actually was. It has become a familiar cautionary tale, a staple of sitcoms and a host of ill conceived cheerful movies. How the jocks accost and bully the poor Nerds, shoving their heads in the toilet, how the sensitive but underthatgreenDolceGabbanasweater gracefully lithe and muscular male manages to negotiate the thin line between 'nerddom' and 'jockdom' and therefore attract the bevies of panting females who have just been waiting for a man who will not submit to to becoming mere charachiture. <br /><br />Me? I don't remember any of those people, I don't think the word nerd had been invented yet. If anything preoccupied me during those years (besides the intense yearning for a series of unattainable females) it was the question of who was most likely to be shortly turned into a game of tic-tac-dead in Vietnam.<br /><br />I was probably what the movies would call a nerd, I got really good grades, I found the academic work at once easy and challenging, and I occasionally smoked pot with my friends (or maybe it was banana skins, I don't remember) and played in the orchestra. I never had my head shoved down the toilet. I didn't even know who the <br />captain of the football team was (to my embarrassment), I didn't even go to the prom.<br />On my biggest date of my senior year, strolling down the Ocean Parkway bridle path I saw a man shot and bleeding out through the knees. My date, believe it or not whose name was I think Buffy, was really nice about the whole thing and handled it better than me actually, much better, but honestly it kind of turned me off to dating for a while.<br /><br />Anyway, the point is that the easy stereotypes that we are offered as 'options' for self-characterization are always to some extent harmful in that the permit us to ignore our actual life experiences. Whether it involves becoming a 'good ole boy' in the south or falling into the jock-nerd dichotomy in High School, they all encourage us to become something we are not for the sake of easy classification.<br /><br />In America it seems, everything is destined to be turned into a cautionary tale sooner or later. Beverages have likewise fallen into this same puerile pattern, beer is for jocks, wine is for nerds,--it is somewhat understandable, just imagine the contest in the movie 'Beerfest' conducted with Sauvignon Blanc--the butchness just disappears completely. Anyway, we should understand one thing, the rest of the world is not this way,--the foolish characitures by which we misremember our lives somehow do not obtain there, or at least they do in some way which is incomprehensible to the casual tourist. I don't know why this is,--I grew up here remember, but having traveled in Europe I got the picture to some extent, the effeminate, intellectual image of the wine drinker simply does not apply there. <br /><br />Anyway, don't get me wrong, I love good beer, always have, but the next time you are gathered in front of the telly with a bunch of guys watching the Super Bowl, try asking for a nice Cab Franc, see what happens, maybe you'll get your head stuck in the toilet, maybe not --but remember this, at least there is a slim to none chance you will get shipped off to Vietnam.Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-61542270105101361702010-01-12T09:47:00.011-05:002010-01-14T06:26:11.639-05:00"Hot Tomato" Wine in Grocery Stores<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IlM_6f047A4/S0yVOJMCsRI/AAAAAAAAAGA/LGyUU6OKQls/s1600-h/tomato.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 123px; height: 92px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IlM_6f047A4/S0yVOJMCsRI/AAAAAAAAAGA/LGyUU6OKQls/s320/tomato.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425875721291739410" /></a><br />I think it is high time for me to weigh in publicly in the debate whether wine should be sold in NY grocery stores. The issue has not died despite its failure to pass the legislature last year and has once again become a hot topic recently in winemaking circles with Scott Osborn of Fox Run vineyards leading the slightly staggering charge.<br /><br />Let me say first that this is not really an economic issue for 90% of wineries since, as I have pointed out to Scott previously, I don't believe that Shoprite will be beating down my door (or that of any other Hudson Valley winery) with sticks of hardened muenster cheese to get me to place Silver Stream Chardonnay in their aisles. As Mike Migliore of WhiteCliff points out, in all probability it will result in the 'Walmartization' of wine with the larger more cost effective operations dominating the shelves. There is also the issue of fairness to liquor store owners who have been moderately cooperative already in promoting New York State wines. Also, it is kind of hard to imagine asking the shelf stocker who trains parakeets dressed in circus outfits in his basement for advice on which is the proper auslese Riesling to go with Veal in truffle sauce.<br /><br />As with all contentious and apparently irresolvable questions I have a simple and unambiguous answer. Allow liquor stores to sell tomatoes. Not only will this level the playing field it will thrill Bloody Mary advocates.<br /><br />Along these same lines I also have a remarkably easy, obviously overlooked solution to global warming; pipe all the excess carbon dioxide produced at coal generating plants into water and sell it as seltzer. I don't understand why nobody has come up with this remarkably simple fix. I can only guess that it is the powerful seltzer industry which has blocked this to date with their scare tactics regarding Government run big seltzer.<br /><br />Which brings me to another issue. If I hear the term carbon footprint one more time I am going to have to shoot somebody. Why anyone coined this term in the first place is beyond me. For those enamored of anthropomorphising anything and everything Carbon does not have feet. It does not walk or dance. No one in the history of the world has ever had their rhumba interrupted by a misplaced lump of coal clumsily trouncing their big toe. However in line with my other world saving solutions (which I am offering here free of charge) it presents an obvious simple fix. If you want to reduce the carbon footprint just buy carbon smaller shoes. Once again it is probably the remarkable simplicity of this that has evidently caused scientists and environmentalists to overlook it. <br /><br />So, in short, let me say this to those who would further complicate our already complicated lives with issues that most likely will only serve to inflame passions thus posing yet a new source of carbon as well as a danger to the brandy manufacturers, leave me out of it. I don't really care if I have to walk two doors down in Shoprite Plaza to buy wine. I don't buy that much wine since I have a whole cellar of the stuff anyway. While I am on the subject, there is one way to solve both problems at once: Wine Coolers! I don't know why I didn't think of this before,--perhaps it was too simple even for me! So get ready for the merger of PSE&G and Arbor Mist. 'Hey! What do you mean there is no ice?'!Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-1060098059762227182009-12-27T13:29:00.017-05:002009-12-28T09:24:48.352-05:00Hybrid vs. Vinifera round two:<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_IlM_6f047A4/Szi_HX9YLaI/AAAAAAAAAF4/JYh_JEMo0N8/s1600-h/boxing.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 261px; height: 169px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_IlM_6f047A4/Szi_HX9YLaI/AAAAAAAAAF4/JYh_JEMo0N8/s320/boxing.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420292284951834018" /></a><br /><br />At this point, after trying to appear objective, I have no choice but to confess I have an innate prejudice against hybrid wines. You can ascribe it to snobbiness but I dislike them in general for the same reasons that I cannot tolerate stupid people, they tend to repeat themselves ad infinitum and they seem innately incapable either of subtlety or of being insulted.<br /><br />Where a grape like Cabernet or Pinot seems possessed under the winemakers hand of an almost infinite variation and evocative of an astounding array of flavors and aromas, varieties like Baco Noir and Seyval seem by comparison remarkably consistent in both flavor and aroma regardless of how they are treated. While this may seem to some a virtue, to a winemaker it presents a uniquely frustrating situation. It's akin to going to the Port Authority where you may buy a ticket for a seemingly unlimited number of destinations but finding that the bus invariably drops you off in Brooklyn. (again, don't get me wrong, I love Brooklyn, even minus the Dodgers, but, you know, if you are looking for a quiet beach, Coney Island does have its drawbacks).<br /><br />Why this is the case is a puzzle but, it is unquestionably true. Hybrids just all seem to have this one dominant personality trait that one simply cannot ignore. It is something like the wart on your great aunt's face, whether you like her or not, it dominates and colors your interactions with her no matter how much you try to ignore it.<br /><br />This brings us to the the current effort to establish hybrids (warts and all) as the signature grapes of the Hudson Valley. Climate dictates they will always dominate viticulture in the valley (you winemakers who are secretly hoping for climate change,-good luck). (As I said in the previous post, there are some exceptions but these are dependent on huge influxes of cash). If we are to develop a signature grape here there is no question (for the near future) therefore that it will be of a hybrid variety. One clearly cannot build a reputation based on a grape that is not native to or widely grown in your region; not really so much because it is dishonest, but because it presents and insurmountable marketing hurdle. This then presents the would be winemaker in the Hudson Valley with a unique dilemna, they may seek either to become a virtuoso utilizing only the limited flavor notes afforded by the hybrid varieties (which is something akin to becoming a virtuoso on an instrument with clearly circumscribed charm as for instance the harmonica or the accordion) or he or she may abandon any pretense at uniqueness and seek to compete purely on the basis of winemaking skill using grapes as local as possible but without that necessarily being the defining parameter. <br /><br />The third and perhaps more interesting possibility is the path Carlo of Hudson-Chatham (and to a lesser extent myself) have gone down, which is to begin experimenting with blends of local hybrids with classical varieties obtained from elsewhere in the state. Carlo's 'Empire' offering (and though I kid Carlo about the use of the name Empire, though I named a wine 'Buckethead') I think is a very solid first step in this direction. It blends wines from different areas of the state and combines classical with hybrid varieties. The result is very drinkable and of reasonable complexity. The consistent undertone of the hybrid component which I have referred to emerges as something I can only liken to juicyfruit gum with a hint of licorice, in any case, not at all unpleasant or reminiscent of the astringency often associated with the red hybrid varieties.<br /><br />Whether or not this turns out to be a viable viticultural/winemaking path time will tell. To hark back to the musical analogy it may turn out to be a curiosity like Mozart's glass harmonica concerto or result in longstanding innovation that vastly expands the available palette such as occurred with the introduction of the more 'strident' brass instruments into the post classical symphony orchestra. My suspicion is that it will be the latter but as I said, I am from Brooklyn and therefore by nature an incurable optimist (go Dodgers). In any case, the geni is definitely out of the bottle (as well as in the bottle), so let's use our three wishes carefully.Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-85774156895657053692009-11-19T09:16:00.018-05:002009-12-28T08:59:11.694-05:00Pride & PrejudiceWhenever Carlo Devito, as a wine writer, is about to offer some good humored criticism of a fellow winemaker he usually prefaces it in some fashion with a statement evincing his affection and respect for that individual about to come under his less than admiring scrutiny, not that I do not think he is sincere so, just let me say here (and I am not just saying this), I genuinely like Carlo DeVito, as I mentioned in previous posts he is one of the few winemakers in the valley with whom I feel I have something in common that goes beyond wine i.e. we are both enamored at the opportunity of waxing poetic over the grape, however, since this blog is not dedicated solely to my personal literary rants on topics of my discretion but to promoting actual discussion about wine I would like to respond to his recent post on EastCoastWineries blog regarding the hybrid vs. non-hybrid controversy in New York viticulture; in particular the segment called <b>'My Favorite Hybrid'</b> which as presented, raises some issues that I would like to address. And as far as the preliminary praise, and in the spirit of obscuring shared ambition as exemplified so eloquently in Shakespeare's rendering of Mark Antony's funeral oration, let me first say I come not to praise Caesar nor to bury him, but to 'goose' him. <br /><br />While the title of his post is obviously coy play on 'My Favorite Martian' (the 1960s sitcom with Bill Bixby and Ray Walston) it is clear that the point Carlo is trying to make with this is that hybrids are not in fact from Mars. He adduces the fact that Cab Sauvignon, one of the most loved and respected of the 'noble' grapes varieties is actually a cross between two venerable varieties, Cab Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. <br /><br />I must admit here that the innate prejudice of the wine buying public in favor of the 'noble' grapes (a term which embraces all the vinifera genus) grates on some deep egalitarian instinct in me (can't we all just get along?) but we need to get some perspective on this issue aside from the political implications and the constant din of clamoring for 'quality' NYS wine which even when produced remains subject to some unfathomable instinctual suspicion.<br /><br />Firstly, I must object to the classification of Cab Sauvignon as a hybrid in the same sense as we have become used to using the term here in NY. Hybrids here have generally come as the result of intentional crossbreeding programs at University sponsored experiment stations, they are not the result of natural selection or historical factors such as resulted in the production of many of the European so called hybrids. The reason for this is simple; new wine grape varieties are no longer produced by germination in the field (We all remember Gregor Mendel from Junior High School and his magic peas--not personally of course oh well, age jokes at my age are de rigeur), they are produced in commercial applications by grafting, so the likelihood of developing serendipitous field crosses (such as occurred in the case of Cab Sauvignon) through a process of selection by growers over decades or centuries such as occurred in Europe here is slim to none.<br /><br />Secondly, as the term is commonly used in America, hybrid refers to varieties that contain genetic material from non-vinifera varieties. This is not the case in the example cited by Carlo. Cab Sauvignon is a cross of two vinifera species. <br /><br />If I may attempt to play the devil's advocate for a moment, I will agree, there are excellent wines being made from hybrid grapes in New York and as Carlo correctly points out, the difference may lay largely in the skill of the winemaker and not in the native characteristics inherent in the juice but to address this last point let me introduce an analogy from a field I am more comfortable with. I am a bass player and I have two instruments that I own, basses. One is European (Czech) and the second was made by a luthier out of Middletown. You can play Beethoven on either of them and make it sound reasonably well. As a bass player, I am keenly aware that I have to struggle to as they say 'get the notes under my fingers' when using the Middletown bass (at the moment I have no choice because my better bass is in hock as the repair shop). Anyway it is just the way that bass is set up and constructed. Secondly, I know that under most circumstances, I well never get the American bass to make a tone as classically beautiful as the second. In other words, if I am playing Beethoven I would much rather be playing the Czech bass. As <br />everyone is aware however, Beethoven is not the only composer and classical not the only style of music. The American Bass is much boomier and has a big bottom, (lower range-- not in the booty sense). If I was playing jazz or country I would much rather be playing the other bass despite the physical challenges. I think the analogy to be found in this is appropos to this discussion and bears some reflection.<br /><br />Also, if you know anything about winegrowing in the Hudson Valley, unless you are a multi-millionaire, growing nothing but vinifera grapes is akin to viticultural masochism. I can tell you this from experience, the amount of labor required to make them productive and the struggles with weather here will require huge constant infusions of that most American of commodities, cash. In case you haven't noticed, that is a commodity presently in short supply.<br /><br />So, the (average) winemaker in the valley in these times finds him or herself in somewhat of a bind. What to do? Grow hybrid grapes and still be able to take pride in the fact that the product you produce was under your hand from inception or, buy grapes from the Finger Lakes or some other region where the weather is a smidge kinder to the vine or a combination of both? <br /><br />(To be Continued)Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-56524635225662381372009-11-08T11:46:00.042-05:002009-11-15T18:53:30.836-05:00Still Hopped Up<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IlM_6f047A4/SvcAROYrtXI/AAAAAAAAAE4/W0JsYcAzoOY/s1600-h/TRwG.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 298px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IlM_6f047A4/SvcAROYrtXI/AAAAAAAAAE4/W0JsYcAzoOY/s320/TRwG.jpg" border="0"> <br />'Tommy Ramone holding up bottle of Silver Stream Gewurz </a><br> <br> <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><p><br />I went to the Kleinert Center last night for the book promotion of 'All Hopped Up and Ready to Go' with the expectation that I was going to be sorely disappointed and also, that I was going in some fashion, in some as yet unknown way, to sorely disappoint. That is just how I generally approach these things and it is not without justification. These type of events are notorious for last minute no-shows of famous names, conversations based around an avowed disinterest in any topic except self promotion, leggy unobtainable and unapproachable 'hotties' floating at the edges of the crowd, me, I didn't care--I was just there selling wine,--so I thought.<br /><br />The event proved anything but disappointing, the 'hotties' might have been sixty years old and the self promotion graphic equalizer turned to ten (but in a very classy way) but it was altogether a most enjoyable experience,--there were of course the expected no-shows,--Tony (that's Tony Fletcher, author of the aforementioned book) announced at the beginning that Artie Traum and John Sebastian (two of the big draw names) had other engagements and then graciously added 'well, I am glad at least they are still playing'. (What? no-ironic rancor?) Anyway, who was there? It was Tommy Ramone, (who I prepared to dislike and who was utterly disarming), Elda Gentile (who I had never heard of, ironically not having really paid attention to the punk scene but who proved eloquent and funny), Eric Weissberg (who I remember and whose beard I remember even more than him from the covers of old folk albums), and of course Fred Smith from Cerighino Smith Winery who (surprise surprise), also turns out (like me) to be a bass-player (only successful having played with Blondie and Television), and also currently (like me) a winemaker (only successful) and Tish and Snooky (also formerly of Blondie). <br /><br />I showed up laden to the gills with amusing anecdotes about Markie Ramone (aka Markie Bell), who had grown up two blocks away in Brooklyn, (and who Fred recalled almost immediately had been a member of the Voidoids), my other claim to fame having played with Huey Lewis back when he was Hugh Cregg in a band called 'Raw Meat'. I kind of expected to be treated with bemused disbelief (as is usually the case unless I happen to run into an old Cornellian or someone from the old neighborhood). Anyway, to my surprise, I was not.<br /><br />Now, I have to tell you all something, --when it comes to these stories <br />about the 'old days' nobody really gives an intense shit about them anyway, even the manic punk old days, where grandma and grandpa had safety pins tucked into their cheeks, so I guess the added disbelief is just kind of gratuitous,(witness my unread and perhaps unreadable memoir 'Down By Our Vineyard'), just nobody gives a shit except of course Tony Fletcher whose book is all about 'that scene', meaning of course the New York music scene of and in which we all participated in some fashion, hence this party, hence this meeting with Fred etc. etc. <br />But! and this is a big but, when musicians, <b>true </b> musicians get together (famous or not), there is a certain unconcerned humility that dominates the tenor of the conversation, this is not because the musicians themselves are humble, far from, we (they) can be as egotistically puerile as the next fellow, moreso, but rather it is from one common shared understanding, --that the distinctions of fame and money (and the corresponding investment in maintaining the fiction that that is what fundamentally separates them) is something like, well how to put this delicately, like watching your girlfriend screw the entire football team and then taking her to a Disney movie and trying to explain to her why Bambi's mother had to get shot,-- somehow you know your heart really isn't in it. <br /><br />What was interesting about last night was that this was not where the conversation ended; it was where it started. Music was not about fame and tragic inevitability, it was about community, about art and about self-definition; that was a given and that's a pretty cool starting place if you ask me.<br />The topics and panel discussion really didn't get much past laying out those parameters and sort of devolved into reminiscences (which is what happens mostly when musicians get either hungry or thirsty, it is a sort of process of self preservation in the guise of self hypnosis).<br /><br />Anyway, when I left, instead of the deflation and disappointment I had expected, I was inexplicably excited and calm at the same time,--I had really enjoyed this, if it was a freak show then I was part of the carnival. By the way, the 'Rock and Roll Red' which was the Cerighino Smith offering at the event was awesome, like the best Bordeaux I have drunk (drinken? drinked? drank I think) anyway cheers and keep up the good work.Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-13355508130105443042009-11-06T09:23:00.003-05:002009-11-06T09:30:16.615-05:00All Hopped UpJust wanted to let all the 4 (four) readers of the blog that there will be an event at the Kleinert/James Art Center in Woodstock N.Y. tomorrow (Nov. 7)5Pm to 7PM for the book release of <b> 'All Hopped Up and Ready to Go' Music from the streets of New York 1927-1957'</b> by Tony Fletcher from . Wine from Silver Stream Winery and Cereghino-Smith will be served along with hors'd'oevres (is that how you spell that?) from Gabriels of Kingston. Article on the event in the Woodstock Times is<br />at http://ulsterpublishing.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=500891Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-3586591284785223612009-10-25T08:46:00.020-04:002009-10-25T12:31:32.942-04:00The Funeral Oration of LothosPerhaps the most famous funeral oration of all time is Pericles <i>Epitaphios Logos</i>. Given at the start of the Peloponesian War it is basically a self congratulatory paean to city of Athens and its inhabitants for being the light of the world. It was politics as pure theater and there is a school of thought that it itself fashioned the identity of the <i> polis </i>, the free citizen, the spirit of democracy, the words were not merely the reflection of the light of culture shed on the ancient world by Greece but the cause of it, the logos in its truest sense, as a creative force.<br /><br />So, who is Lothos, then? Lothos was the Vampire King in Buffy the Vampire slayer. He accosts Buffy at the Senior dance, despite his great power and the fact that her predecessor failed and was killed by Lothos, Buffy, the cheerleader, still manages to kill Lothos.<br /><br />Yesterday I went to the funeral of Tom LaBarbera. He was an artist in Chester among other things. I knew him but I did not know him that well. My grief at his passing was not really personal, there were not tears, it was regret at the loss of a valuable member of society and the desire to show respect for an honorable life.<br /><br />It is amazing how we humans are so resourceful that can turn death into so many things. Like Pericles we can use it as a catalyzing flame to weld the varied elements of society into a unified whole, or, like Buffy we can use it to discover a whole unknown dimension of ourselves that contradicts our daily life, the priest at the mass yesterday used it as a means of comforting and a means of strengthening faith. We all find ways to use death to augment and provide purpose in a life that suddenly seems purposeless or pointless,--it is perhaps the most democratic of all states of existence, despite what the priest said, in it we are all suddenly equal.<br />--it is in fact probably this capability to utilize death to enhance life which most sets us apart from the animals, perhaps even more than walking upright, except of course when it comes to vampires. Vampires, like Lothos, are those who have escaped the great leveler, become something else, something transcendent. It takes a cheerleader to put them back in their place, to set the universe aright, to restore democracy to the human condition.<br /><br />As life imitates art, it occurs to me the war on terror is something like the fight against vampires, not that it is being carried on mostly by motivated really cute cheerleaders, but it has all the same elements, at times it seems like an attempt to kill the unkillable, (those already dead) and its purpose is ostensibly the spread of democracy. We must be cautious. Like Pericles, it may be used as a pretext to empire. As in 'Buffy' it seems to represent the permanent and final removal from the world of a seemingly indelible evil a goal which we know is a convenient fiction as long as man is man.<br /><br />On another note, Tom was of Italian heritage. Everyone knows that Italians on the whole love wine more that most people. Almost every Italian immigrant to American had a father or grandfather who use to make wine in the basement, even in the midst of a confusing new life they knew they had to hold on to something that was good. Perhaps it represented to them the glories of a faded empire, perhaps it represented the means for the temporary removal from the world of the seemingly indelible forces of present despair and inevitable defeat. (I'm a Jew so I really wouldn't know, but, as a writer and a Jew I know that the real danger as always is that the portrayal of character will become caricature.) Even in the words we use when drinking it 'Cheers!'. We seem to extol the victory of Buffy over Lothos. (Not that Buffy was of Italian extraction but in her we see the possibility of the ultimate Pax Romana, the restoration of the accord with death itself, allied also with a possibly winning High School football team) In drinking it, for a time a least we seem to become our nobler selves. <br /><br />So, what does wine represent really, the hope of empire, or the banishment of inequality, the eventual victory of life over death or the attraction of our darker selves as the proving ground of our souls, is wine tied to the perpetuation of culture or is culture itself dependent on the dissolution of differences between men and women of good will. Who knows, and aside from what it represents it tastes good so, in the end, who really cares. Buffy can go back to the Senior dance and have fun, there will be other vampires to slay, Pericles can build a lasting monument to his culture from mere words, in the end all we can do is try to enjoy what is best in our lives and try to preserve it for those that follow --isn't that the point? <br />The priest said Tom LaBarbera was already painting away in his new abode. I don't know but I hope so, and if he is I hope he has a glass of wine as well.<br /><br />So, Pericles, Tom LaBarbera, Buffy, Caesar Osama Bin Laden, it all seems suspiciously random and rambling, a bunch of nonsense, a temporary insanity incurred by a recognition of our own mortality, but perhaps it has its own form of exponential sanity, a means of reaching calculably to a higher dimension through mindless blather, maybe it is-- 'blogarithmic' , maybe it is, --one more glass of wine and I won't care.Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-64911474526323006782009-10-18T10:39:00.008-04:002009-10-19T09:13:50.403-04:00Why I Like Beer (With apologies to David Letterman--he needs a few extra)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IlM_6f047A4/StsrzQHzJoI/AAAAAAAAAEw/qAhwz_IyCqQ/s1600-h/beer_v_wine.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:left;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 210px; height: 191px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IlM_6f047A4/StsrzQHzJoI/AAAAAAAAAEw/qAhwz_IyCqQ/s320/beer_v_wine.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393953138207303298" /></a> <br /><br />First of all there is way too much wine in the world and there is never enough beer.<br /><br />Secondly, Americans it turns out can make beer better than anyone in the world.<br /><br />Thirdly, wine has a whole personality while beer has a profile. Sometimes you just don't feel like dealing with a whole person.<br /><br />Fourthly, people who make beer are friendlier on the whole and don't really make you feel like an asshole when you talk about it.<br /><br />Fifthly, it comes in six packs. (Twelve of anything is just too much and one is always too few.)<br /><br />Sixth, nobody ever comes up to you and asks you for 'sweet' beer.<br /><br />Seven, it fits better in the refrigerator and in general you don't have to pamper it for it to stay good.<br /><br />Eight, nobody is looking for a deeper meaning in beer, if anything they are looking for less meaning.<br /><br />Nine, bad beer is generally inexpensive while bad wine is generally expensive.<br /><br />Ten, it looks better when it gets in your moustache or beard.<br /><br />Anyway, that's my take on it, so people bemoaning the popularity of beer over wine in this country should just get over it. Of course, as a winemaker I am perennially hoping for a reversal of this paradigm but I don't see it happening in the near future. So for now, wine is the ugly girl at the party that the moderately pretty girls bring to make themselves look better.<br /><br />So, all this begs the question, why don't I make beer instead of wine,--the answer is the same as why did I get married. From the outside it looks infinitely more interesting.Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-39553411569245885652009-10-14T15:18:00.003-04:002009-10-14T15:35:09.558-04:00What Am I Doing Here?My wines were recently reviewed by Tony Fletcher on http://www.ijamming.net/<br />I think I may have mentioned, Tony's book <br />"All Hopped up and Ready to Go", W.W. Norton<br />is coming out soon, October 26th, it is a precis of the NY music scene and I for one,<br />(particularly as a musician finding someone finally with something intelligent to say about the contemporary music scene) am<br />eager to read it and so even if I have mentioned it you will forgive me.<br />Anyway, in the interests of pure laziness I am reprinting my response to the review here: (since probably no one else is interested)<br /><br /><br />Tony,<br /> <br />Thanks for the plug and the honesty. I would expect nothing less and I think you<br />captured it to a 'T' (though I think you undershot on the Chard,--it is really something quite remarkable now when at the right temp. Several wine professionals have liked it immensely)<br />but on the whole you did certainly capture the spirit of what I am doing better than anyone which falls somewhere in between the committed muscular amateurism of a 'garagista punk' on steroids (implying a willful lack of marketing polish) and the image of a parapalegic on crutches trying to make the winning kick at a football game also comes to mind. In short (not to make too much of a virtue of necessity) it is intended to reflect my opinion that great wine should be a drama each time and drama by definition should never be polished. Sweet wine is comedy, I really<br />have nothing against sweet wine or comedy, (I enjoy Rieslind ,<i>(sic Riesling)</i> and in fact I made a super Pear Wine last year. At $16 a bottle it was as good as $70 ice wine--still have two bottles left), it is only the saccharine approach (of) being driven by the market I really despise and the refusal to be driven by the market conversely something that I admire, even if I fail to achieve it myself, sometimes, --it is a challenge to the moon eyed self-swindlers who come and inquire 'do you have any sweet wine' --it is not a challenge to sweet wine per se only to the reluctance to throw off cultural shackles and actually taste something besides sugar when approaching (a) wine that bothers me. <br /><br />Just to clear things up,<br /> <br />As for the 'Frankie' 'Franky' contretemps. I was aware of the different spelling versions however,<br />being a New Yorker, an unreconstructed Brooklyn Boy, putting 'Frankie' <br />on anything would constitute linguistic heresy.<br />Never even considered it.<br />Hence, in short not a copyright concern at all.<br />My previous successful red was called 'Call me a Cab', <br />so correct syntax is not really what I was going for.<br />Still pissed the Dodgers left:)<br /> <br /> Ken<br /><br />Tony's original message follows:<br /><br /><br />Ken <br /><br /><br />I posted my first review of the Hunter Wine Fest today. Focused on you and Suhru for obvious reasons. As a good honest winemaker you'll appreciate the need for honest tasting notes regardless of acquaintanceship. I found it interesting that you did so well with the red wines (compared to the whites, IMHO) as I think they're generally much harder to pull off in this region. And I love that you think independently and have fun with what you're doin... <br /><br /><br />All (the) best ..Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5534849177453942935.post-50436819208123132152009-10-06T06:11:00.020-04:002009-10-06T07:31:02.384-04:00The Big Lebowski or Where Have You Been Mr. Robinson<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IlM_6f047A4/Ssskce5zcJI/AAAAAAAAAEo/mJssQ1keyIc/s1600-h/samelliot.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 130px; height: 100px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IlM_6f047A4/Ssskce5zcJI/AAAAAAAAAEo/mJssQ1keyIc/s320/samelliot.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389441450829377682" /></a><br />I love old timers. I really do. I always have. They never walk up and confront you directly, they always kind of just sidle up and then you just happen to notice them standing there. As if they didn't want to impose themselves on you. As if they expect to be regarded as irrelevant. They don't necessarily have to be all that old either, like 'The Stranger' (Sam Elliot) in the Big Lebowski, they serve in my experience in our society something like the function of a Greek Chorus; conscience and narrator in one.<br /><br />The Marlboro Harvest Festival had been rained out so we were setting up our tents on Sunday at Cluett Schanz Park instead of Saturday as had been originally scheduled.<br />"The grapes are no good this year. Not enough sugar." I had actually noticed the elderly gentleman before picking his way with his cane among the wine tents.<br />"Well," I temporized 'We'll see, they still got a few weeks, we'll see if it dries out."<br />"Yeah, I went to Cornell in 1967." This immediately struck me as a bit odd. The gentleman standing there appeared to be in his eighties, his baseball cap and stoop said he had done some farming in his day. I had gone to Cornell in 1968 and he struck me as being at least twenty five years older than I.<br />"You remember the Boxcar?" (OK, now I was really freaking out, as they said back in the day.)<br />"Sure I do, out towards Dryden, the Warehouse was in back." <br />I remembered the Warehouse distinctly. It was what it said it was, a warehouse converted to a club. The likewise eponymous Boxcar had been just a bar, sans music. I had seen Taj Mahal and James Cotton Blues Band among others at the Warehouse in 1969 I had in fact (children look away) got drunk on White Lightning in the dressing room with James Cotton.<br />"Yeah, sawdust on the floor." He smiled at the recollection.<br />"I know every joint that served beer within twenty miles of Ithaca."<br />"Yeah, you went to Cornell alright."<br />"I know all the farmers around here. I ran the Community Bank in Highland. Knew Mark, you know Mark Miller?"<br />"Oh yeah, only met him once but helluva nice fellow. Didn't care much for his son, Eric."<br />I had met Mark Miller at a HVWGA luncheon. He had sat there beaming the whole time but in this kind of impersonal way, the way people who all their life had blinded people with their intellect and now don't want to blemish that impression cultivated over a lifetime with the natural infirmities of old age do. Like an artist who knows when the painting is done and doesn't want to mar it with the extraneous brushstroke. Their erratic blinding light simmers to a steady beaming paternal radiance. They become masks. Finally, strangers to everyone and finally themselves. That was the Mark Miller I met. No doubt he too in his younger days had gotten drunk in the dressing room of some itinerant blues man or jazz artist.<br />"You know how he got started?"<br />I shook my head.<br />"Well he used to live down in Scarsdale. Had these two week deadlines."<br />Mark Miller used to be an illustrator (Saturday Evening Post and Herald Tribune I think.)<br />"He got so nervous you know with those deadlines. So his wife bought him this five gallon jug to make wine. That's how he got started."<br />"Really? Didn't know that. What's your name?"<br />"Fred, Fred Robinson. Yeah, --I'm the last of the old time community bankers."<br />"Ken, Lifshitz. I'm from Monroe." This was perhaps the first time I had ever said this and really meant it.<br />"Oh yeah Citizen's Bank, right?"<br />"Yeah, right, Marilyn from Citizen's Bank."<br /><br />Anyway, the Hudson Valley within about the past year has lost two of it's greatest lights. Mark Miller a little over a year ago, and Ben Feder just last week. With their loss, we descend a little more into an impersonal age, an age where machines and algorithms make decision, not people, a world of beaming benign masks, a world where you could never drink White Lightning with James Cotton in the dressing room of the warehouse. I generally don't care really for this 'bemoaning the faceless present' stuff much, but lately it is growing on me. Maybe it's because I am getting to be an old timer myself. Maybe it's because I am getting to be a stranger to myself and everyone else. In either case, that is a shame.<br />"Yep, no more community bankers after me."<br />I realize that I am, at 58, a person with the sensibilities of an eighty nine year old man. This is not really surprising, as I have had the sensibilities of an eighty nine year old man since I was fifteen.<br />"Yep"<br />"Yeah, not enough sugar this year."<br />"Yep."<br /><br />(Note to future biographers: The Mark Miller collection is being held at Cornell,<br />Mark Miller and Benmarl Winery Collection #6716. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.)Kenneth B Lifshitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03351928760010543479noreply@blogger.com0